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THE 


STRANGE ADVENTURES 

OF 

CAPTAIN DANGEROUS. 


% ftamtik in J]Iain €ngli% 


ATTEMPTED BY 


J 


GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA. 



BOSTON: 


PUBLISHED BY T. 0. H. P. BURNHAM, 

113 WASHINGTON STREET. 

1863 . 







•• 


* * X '* h ■ . '* r A 


aj a a: ' a u ta ; J i r f a a oh < 


: 7 ? T : o a: • 

,!.'.'Air/.:I f;L .'I .11 .0 .T 7 a a:i :1- i.-fl i i 


:i :• . ! m i ■ r>':> .< u A7 f zi t 


THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN DANGEROUS; 


WHO WAS A SOLDIER, A PIRATE, A MERCHANT, A SPY, A SLAVE AMONG THE 
MOORS, A BASHAW IN THE SERVICE OF THE GREAT TURK, AND DIED 
AT LAST IN HIS OWN HOUSE IN HANOVER SQUARE. 

A NARRATIVE IN PLAIN ENGLISH, 

ATTEMPTED BY 

GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA. 


Chapter the First. 

MINE OWN HOUSE. 

I, John Dangerous, a faithful sub- 
ject of his Majesty King George, 
whose bread, God bless him ! I have 
eaten, and whose battles I have fought, 
in my poor way, am now in my sixty- 
eighth year, and live in my own house 
in Hanover Square. By virtue of 
several commissions, both English and 
foreign, I have a right to call myself 
Captain ; and if any man say that I 
have no such right, he lies, and de- 
serves the stab. It may be that this 
narrative, now composed only for my 
own pleasure, will, long after my 
death, see the light in print, and that 
some sham Captain, or sham critic, or 
pitiful creature of that kind, will 
question my rank, or otherwise des- 
pitefully use my memory. Let such 
gutter-bloods venture it at their peril. 
I have, alas, no heirs male ; but to 
my daughter’s husband, and to his 
descendants, or, failing them, to their 
executors, administrators, and assigns, 
I solemnly commit the task of seeking 
out such envious rogues, and of kick- 
ing and cudgelling them on the basest 
part of their base bodies. The stab I 
forego ; I wish not to cheat the hang- 
man of his due. . But let the knaves 
discover, to the aching of their sorry 
sides, that even the ghost of John 
Dangerous is not to be trifled with. 

There is a knot of these same pesti- 
lent persons who meet at a coffee-house 
in Great Swallow Street, which I am 
sometimes minded to frequent, and 
who imagine that they show their wit 


and parts by reviling their Church and 
their King, and even by maligning the 
Honorable East India Company, — a 
corporation to which I am beholden 
for many favors. “ Fellow, ” I said, 
only last Saturday to a whipper snapper 
from an Inn of Court, — a Thing I 
would not trust to defend my tom-cat 
were he in peril at the Old Bailey for 
birdslaughter, and who picks up a 
wretched livelihood, I am told, by 
writing lampoons against his betters in 
a weekly Review, — “ Fellow, ” I said, 
“were I twenty years younger, and 
you twenty years older, John Danger- 
ous would vouchsafe to pink an eyelet- 
hole in your waistcoat. Did I care to 
dabble in your polite conversation or 
your belles lettres (of which I knew 
much more than ever you will know 
years before the parish was at pains to 
fix your begetting on some one), I 
would answer your scurrilities in print ; 
but this I disdain, sirrah. Good stout 
ash and good strong Cordovan leather 
are the things fittest to meet your im- 
pertinences with ; ” and so I held out 
my foot, and shook my staff at the 
coxcomb ; and he was so civil to me 
during the rest of the evening as to 
allow me to pay his reckoning for him. 

The chief delight I derive from end- 
ing my days in Hanover Square is the 
knowledge that the house is mine own. 
I bought it with the fruit of mine own 
earnings, mine own moneys — not got- 
ten from grinding the faces and squeez- 
ing the vitals of the poor, but acquired 
by painful and skilful industry, and 
increased by the lawful spoil of war. 
For booty, as I have heard a great 


The Strange Adventures of Captain JDangercus . 


commander say in Russia, is a holy 
thing. I have not disdained to gather 
moderate riches by the buying and 
selling of lawful merchandise ; albeit 
I always looked on mere commerce 
and barter as having something of the 
peddling atid huxtering savor in them. 
My notion of a Merchant is that of a 
Bold Spirit who embarks on his own 
venture in his own ship, and is his 
own supercargo, and has good store of 
guns and Bold Spirits like himself on 
board, and sails to and fro on the 
High Seas whithersoever he pleases. 
As to the color of the flag he is under, 
what matters it if it be no color at all, 
as old Robin Roughhead used to say 
to me, — even Black, which is the ne- 
gation of all color ? Sol have traded 
in my way, and am the better by some 
thousands of pounds for my trading, 
now. That much of my wealth has 
its origin in lawful plunder I scorn to 
deny. If you slay a Spanish Don in 
fair fight, and the Don wears jewelled 
rings on all his fingers, and carries a 
great bag of moidores in his pocket, 
are you to leave him on the field, 
prithee, or gently ease him of his val- 
uables ? Can the crows eat his finery 
as well as his carcass ? If I find a 
ship full of golden doubloons and silver 
candlesticks destined for the chapel of 
St. Jago de Compostella, am I to 
scuttle the ship and let her go down 
with all these good things on board ; 
or am I to convey them to mine own 
lockers, giving to each of my valiant 
comrades his just and proper share ? 
The governor of Carthagena will 
never get the doubloons, St. Jago of 
Compostella will never see his candle- 
sticks ; why should not I and my 
Brave Hearts enjoy them instead of 
the fishes and the mermaids ? They 
have coral enough down there, I trow ; 
what do they want with candlesticks ? 
If they lack further ornament, there 
are pearls enow to be had out of the 
oysters — unless there be lawyers down 
below — ay, and pearls too in dead 
men’s skulls, and emerald and diamond 
rings on skeleton hands, among the 


sea-weed, sand, and the many-colored 
pebbles of the great Deep. 

There are those who call me an old 
Pirate. Let them. I was never in 
trouble with the Admiralty Court. I 
can pass Execution Dock without 
turning pale. And no one can gainsay 
me when I aver that I have faithfully 
served his Majesty King George, and 
was always a true friend to the Prot- 
estant succession ? 

There has been a mighty talk, too, 
about my turning Turk. Why should 
not I, if I could not help it ? I never 
turned my coat, as some fine gentlemen 
who have never been to Constantinople 
have done. I never changed my 
principles, although I was a Bashaw 
with three tails. Better to have three 
tails than to be a rat with only one. 
And, let me tell you, it is a mighty 
fine thing to be a Bashaw, and to have 
as many purses full of sequins as there 
are days in the year. 

I should have been hanged long 
ago, should I — hanged for a Pirate, a 
Spy, and a Regenade ? Well, I have 
escaped the bow-string in a country 
where hundreds die of sore throat 
every day, and I can afford to laugh 
at any prospect of the halter in mine 
old age. Sword of Damocles forsooth ! 
why my life has been hanging on a 
cobweb any time these fifty years ; 
and here I am at sixty-eight safe and 
sound, with a whole liver and a stout 
heart, and a bottle of wine to give a 
friend, and a house of mine own in 
Hanover Square. 

I write this in the great front parlor, 
which I have converted into a library, 
study, and counting-room. The year 
of our Lord is seventeen hundred and 
eighty. His Majesty’s subjects have 
lost eleven days — through some ro- 
guery in high places, you may be sure 
— since I was a young man ; and were 
I a curmudgeon, I might grudge that 
snipping off of the best part of a fort- 
night from an old man’s life. It may 
be, indeed, that Providence, who has 
always been good to me, will add 
eleven days — yea, and twice eleven — 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


to the span of poor old John Dangerous. 
I have many mercies to be thankful 
for ; of sins likewise, and grievous 
ones, there may be a long list that I 
shall have to account for ; but I can 
say that I never killed a man in cold 
blood, that I never wilfully wronged a 
woman, so long as she was not obsti- 
nate, that I never spake an unkind 
word to a child, that I always gave 
freely from that which I got freely, 
and never took from him who had 
little, and that I was always civil to 
the clergy. Yet Doctor Dubiety of 
St. George’s tells me that I have been 
a great sinner, and bids me, now, to 
repent of my evil ways. Dr. Dubiety 
is in the right, no doubt ; — how could 
a Doctor of Divinity be ever in the 
wrong ? — but I can’t see that I am so 
much worse than other folks. I should 
be in better case, perhaps, if these 
eyes stood wider open. I confess that 
I have killed many men with powder 
and lead, and the sharp sword ; but, 
then, had I not shot or stabbed them, 
they would surely have shot or stabbed 
me. And are not his Majesty’s fellow- 
subjects shooting and stabbing one 
another at this instant moment in the 
American plantations ? No ; I always 
fought fair, and never refused quarter 
when mine enemy threw up his point ; 
nor, unless a foeman’s death were 
required for lawful reprisals, did I 
ever refuse moderate ransom. 

There may be some things belonging 
to my wordly store that trouble me a 
little in the night season. Should I 
have given St. Jago de Compostella’s 
candlesticks to Westminster Abbey? 
Why, surely, the Dean and Chapter 
are rich enough. But I declare that 
I had neither act nor part in applying 
the thumbscrews to the Spanish cap- 
tain, and subjecting the boatswain and 
his mate to the ordeal of flogging and 
pickling. ’Twas not I, but Matcham, 
who is dead, that caused the carpenter 
to be carbonadoed, and the Scotch 
purser to walk the plank. Those 
were, I grant, deeds worthy of Black- 
beard ; but I had naught to do with 
them. John Dangerous has suffered 


too many tortures in the dungeons of 
the Portuguese Inquisition to think of 
torturing his fellow-creatures. Then, 
as to what became of Dona Estella. 
I declare that I did my best to save 
that unhappy lady. I entreated, I 
protested ; but in vain. None of that 
guilt lies at my door ; and in the 
crime of him who roasted the Bishop, 
and cut off the Franciscan Monk’s 
great toes, I have no share. Let 
every man answer for his own deeds. 
When I went the Middle Passage, I 
tried to keep the slaves alive as long 
as I could. When they died, what 
was there to do but to fling them over- 
board ? Should I not have done the 
same by white men ? I was not one 
of those cruel Guinea captains who 
kept the living and the dead chained 
together. I defy any one to prove it. 

And all this bald chat about sacking 
towns and gutting convents ? War is 
war all the world over; and if you 
take a town by assault, why of course 
you must sack it. As to gutting con- 
vents, ’tis a mercy to let some pure 
air into the close, stifling places ; and, 
of a surety, an act of charity to let the 
poor captive nuns out for a holiday. 
Reverend Superiors, holy Sisters, I 
never did ye any harm. You cannot 
torment me in the night. Your pale 
faces and shadowy forms have no need 
to gather round the bed of John Dan- 
gerous. Take, for Pity’s sake, those 
Eyes away. But no more. These 
thoughts drive me mad. 

I am not alone in my house. My 
daughter, my beloved Lilias, my only 
and most cherished child, the child of 
my old age, the legacy of the departed 
Saint her mother, lives with me. 
Bless her ! she believes not a word of 
the lies that are whispered of her old 
father. If she were to be told a tithe 
of them, she would grieve sorely ; but 
she holds no converse with slanderers 
and those who wag their tongues and 
say so-and-so of such-a-one. She 
knows that my life has been wild, and 
stormy, and dangerous as my name ; 
but she knows that it has also been 
one of valor, and honesty and honor. 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


St. Jago de Compostella’s candlesticks 
never went towards her schooling, 
pretty creature ! My share from the 
gold in the scuttled ship never helped 
to furnish forth her dowry. Lilias is 
my joy, my comfort, my stay, my 
merciful consolation for the loss of 
that good and perfect Woman her 
mother. Dear heart ! she has never 
been crossed in love, never known 
Love’s sorrows, angers, disappoint- 
ments, and despair. She was married 
at twenty years of age to the man of 
her choice; and I am delighted to 
know that I never interfered, by word 
or by deed, with the progress of her 
wooing ; that he to whom she is 
wedded is one of the worthiest of 
youths ; and that Heaven has blessed 
me with the means to enable him to 
maintain the state and figure of a 
gentleman. 

Thus, although comfort and quiet 
are the things I chiefly desire after 
the bustle and turmoil of a tempest^ 
tossed life, and the pleasure I take in 
the gaieties of the town is but small, 
it cheers me to see my Son and 
Daughter enjoying themselves, as those 
who have youth and health and an 
unclouded conscience are warranted in 
doing, and, indeed, called upon to do. 
I like them on Sundays and holidays 
to come to church at St. George’s, 
and sit under Doctor Dubiety, where 
I, as a little lad, sat many and many 
a time, more than fifty years ago ; but 
my house is no conventicle, and on 
all weekdays and lawful occasions my 
family is privileged to partake to their 
heart’s content of innocent and per- 
mitted amusements. I never set my 
face against a visit to the playhouse or 
to the concert-room ; although to me, 
who can remember the most famous 
players and singers of Europe, the 
King’s Theatre and the Rotunda, and 
even Drury-Lane, are very tame places, 
filled with very foolish folk. But they 
please the young people, and that is 
enough for me. Nor to an occasional 
junketing at Vauxhall do I ever 
object. ’Tis true I have seen Rane- 
lagh and Marylebone and Belsize, to 


say nothing of the chief Continental 
Tivolis, Spas, Lustgardens, and other 
places of resort of the Great ; but 
fiddlers are fiddlers, and colored lamps 
are colored lamps, all the world over, 
I suppose; and my children have as 
much delight in gazing on these bril- 
liant follies now as I had when I and 
the eighteenth century were young. 
Only against masquerades and faro- 
tables, as likewise against the perni- 
cious game of E. O., do I sternly set 
my face, deeming them as wholly 
wicked, carnal, and unprofitable, and 
leading directly to perdition. 

It rejoices me much that my son, 
or rather son-in-law, — but I love to 
call him by the more affectionate 
name, — is in no wise addicted to dicing, 
or horse-racing, or cock-fighting, or 
any of those sinful and riotous courses 
to which so many of our genteel youth 
— even to those of the first quality — 
devote themselves. He is no Puritan ; 
but he has a proper sense of what is 
due to the honor and decency of his 
family, and refrains from soiling them 
among the profligate crew to be met 
with, not alone at Newmarket, or at 
the “Dog and Duck,” but in Pall- 
Mall, and in the very ante-chambers 
of St. J ames’s. He rides his hackney, 
as a gentleman should, nor have I 
prohibited him from occasionally taking 
my Lilias an airing in a neat curricle ; 
but he is no better on the turf, no 
comrade of jockeys and stablemen, 
no patron of bruisers and those that 
handle the backsword. I would dis- 
inherit him were I to suspect him of 
such practices, or of an over-fondness 
for the bottle, or of a passion for cards. 
He hunts sometimes, and fishes and 
shoots, and he has a pretty fancy for 
the making of salmon-flies, in the 
which pursuit, I conclude, there is 
much ingenuity, and no manner of 
harm, fish being given to us for food, 
and the devising how best to snare 
the creatures entirely lawful. 

Lilias Dangerous had been wedded 
to Edward Marriner these two years. 
It was at first my design to buy the 
youth a pair of colors, and to let him 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


see the world and the usages of law- 
ful warfare for a year or two ; but 
my Lilias could not bear the thought 
of her young Ensign’s coming home 
without an arm or a leg, or perchance 
being slain in some desperate conflict 
with savage Indians, or scarcely less 
savage Americans ; and I did not 
press my plan of giving Edward for a 
time to the service of the King. He, 
I am bound to say, was eager to take 
up a commission ; but the tears and 
entreaties of my Daughter, who thinks 
War the wickedest of crimes, and 
the shedding of human blood a wholly 
unpardonable thing, prevailed. So 
they were married, and are happy; 
and I am sure, now, that were I to 
lose either of them, it would break 
the old man’s heart. 

My Lilias is tall and slender, her 
skin is very white, her hair a rich 
brown, her eyes very large and clear 
and blue. But that I am too old to 
be vain, I might be twitted with con- 
ceit when I state that she holds these 
advantages of person less from her 
Mother than from myself, her loving 
father. Not that I was so comely, 
in my young days; but my Grand- 
mother before me was of the same 
fair Image that I so delight to look 
upon in Lilias. She was tall, and 
white, and brown-haired, and blue- 
eyed. She had Lilias’s small and 
exquisitely-fashioned hands and feet, 
or rather Lilias has hers. To me 
these features were only transmitted 
in a meaner degree. I was a big- 
boned lusty lad, with flowing brown 
locks, an unfreckled skin, and an 
open eye ; but my Grandmother’s 
face and form have renewed them- 
selves in my child. At twenty she is 
as beautiful as her Great-grandmother 
must have been at twenty, as I am 
told and know that Lady was, albeit 
when I remember her she was nearly 
ninety years of age. 

Yes ; Lilias’s eyes are very blue ; 
but they are always soft and tender 
and pitiful in their glance. Her 
Great-grandmother’s had, when she 
was moved, a strange wild look that 


awed and terrified the beholders. 
Only once in the life of my Lilias, 
when she was very young, and on the 
question of some toy or sweetmeat 
which my departed Saint had denied 
her, did I notice that terrible look in 
her blue eyes. My wife, who, albeit 
the most merciful soul alive, ever 
maintained strict discipline in her 
family, would have corrected the child 
for what she set down as flat mutiny 
and rebellion ; but I stayed her chast- 
ening hand, and bade the young girl 
walk awhile in the garden until her 
heat was abated ; and as she went 
away, her little breast heaving, her 
little hands clenched, and the terrible 
look darting out on me through the 
silken tangles of her dear hair, I 
shuddered, and said, “ Wife of mine, 
our Lilias’s look is one she cannot 
help. It comes from Me, you may 
have seen it, fiercer and fiercer in 
mine own eyes; and she, whom of 
all women I loved and venerated, 
looked thus when anger overcame her. 
And though I never knew my own 
dear Mother, she, or I greatly mistake, 
must have had that look in hers like- 
wise.” 

I thank Heaven that those pure 
blue waters, limpid and bright, in my 
Lilias’s eyes were nevermore ruffled 
by that storm. As she grew up, their 
expression became even softer and 
kinder, and she never ceased from 
being in the likeness of an Angel. 
She looks like one now, and will be 
one, I trust, some day, Above, where 
she can pray for her danger-worn old 
sire. 

My own wife (whose name was 
Lilias too) was a merry, plump, 
ruddy-skinned little woman — a very 
baby in these strong arms of mine. 
She had laughing black eyes, and 
coal-black tresses, and lips which 
were always at vintage-time. Al- 
though her only child takes after me, 
not her, in face and carriage, in all 
things else she resembles my Saint. 
She is as merry, as light-hearted, as 
pure and good, as she was. She has 
the same humble, pious Faith; the 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


same strong, stern will of abiding by 
Right ; the same hearty, outspoken 
hatred of wrong, abhorrence of Wrong. 
She has the same patience, cheerful- 
ness, and obedience in her behavior to 
those who are set in authority over 
her ; and if I am by times angered, 
or peevish, or moody, she bears with 
my infirmities in the same meek, 
loving, and forgiving spirit. She has 
her Mother’s grace, her Mother’s voice, 
her Mother’s ringing voice. She has 
her Mother’s infinite care of and be- 
nevolence to the poor and needy. She 
has her Mother’s love for merry sports 
and innocent romps. Like my departed 
Saint, she has an exquisitely neat and 
quick hand for making pastries and 
marchpanes, possets, and sugared tank- 
ards ; and like her she plays excellently 
on the harpsichords. 

Thus, in a quiet comfort and com- 
petence, in the love of my children, 
and in the King’s peace, these my 
latter days are gliding away. I am 
somewhat troubled with gout and 
twitching pains, and fulness of humors, 
with other old men’s ailments ; and I 
do not sleep well o’nights owing to 
vexatious dreams and visions, to abate 
which I am sometimes let blood ; but 
beyond these cares — and who hath 
not his cares? — Captain John Dan- 
gerous, of number One hundred Hano- 
ver Square, is a happy man. 

Chapter the Second. 

THE HISTORY OF AN UNKNOWN LADY, 

WHO CAME FROM DOVER IN A 

COACH-AND-SIX. 

In the winter of the year 1720, 
died in her house in Hanover Square, 
-—the very one in which I am now 
finishing my life, — an Unknown Lady 
nearly ninety years of age. The 
mansion was presumed to be her own, 
and it was as much hers as it is mine 
now; but the reputed landlord was 
one Doctor Vigors, a physician of the 
College in Warwick Lane, in whose 
name the lease ran, who was duly 
rated to the poor as tenant, and whose 
patient the Unknown Lady was given 


out to be. But when Dr. Vigors 
came to Hanover Square it was not 
as a Master, but as the humblest of 
servants ; and no tradesman, constable, 
maid, or lacquey about the house or 
neighborhood would have ventured 
for his or her life to question that, 
from cellar to roof, every inch of the 
house belonged to the Unknown Lady. 
The vulgar held her in a kind of awe, 
and spoke of her as the Lady in Dia- 
monds ; for she always wore a number 
of those precious gems, in rings, brace- 
lets, stomachers, and the like. The 
gentlefolks, of whom many waited 
upon her, from her first coming hither 
unto her death, asked for “ my Lady,” 
and nothing more. It was in the 
year 1714 that she first arrived in 
London, coming late at night from 
Dover, in a coach-and-six, and bring- 
ing with her one Mr. Cadwallader, a 
person of a spare habit and great 
gravity of countenance, as her stew- 
ard ; one Mistress Nancy Talmash, 
as her waiting-woman ; and a foreign 
person of a dark and forbidding mien, 
who was said to be her chaplain. In 
the following year, and during the 
unhappy troubles in Scotland arising 
out of the treasons of the Earl of Mar, 
and other Scots Lords, one of his 
Majesty’s messengers came for the 
foreign person, and conveyed him in 
a coach to the Cockpit at Whitehall ; 
while another messenger took up his 
abode in the house at Hanover Square, 
lying in the second best bed-chamber, 
and having his table apart for a whole 
week. From these circumstances, it 
was rumored that the Unknown Lady 
was a Papist and Jacobite ; that the 
priest, her confederate, was bound 
for Newgate, and would doubtless 
make an end of it at Tyburn ; and 
that the Lady herself would be before 
many days clapt up in the Tower. 
But Signor Casagiotti, the Venetian 
envoy, claimed the foreign person 
and obtained his release ; and it was 
said that one of the great lords of the 
council came himself to Hanover 
Square to take the examination of the 
Unknown Lady, and was so well 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


satisfied with the speech he had with 
her as to discharge her then and there 
from custody, — if, indeed, she had 
ever been under any kind of durance, 
— and promise her the King and 
Minister's protection for the future. 
The foreign person was suffered to 
return, and thenceforward was ad- 
dressed as Father Ruddlestone, as 
though he had some license bearing 
him harmless from the penalties which 
then weighed upon recusant persons. 
And I am given to understand that, 
on the evening of his enlargement, 
the same great Lord, being addressed 
in a jocular manner at the coffee-house 
by a person of honor, and asked if he 
had not caught the Pope, the Devil, 
and the Pretender in petticoats and 
diamonds, somewhere in St. George’s 
parish, very gravely made answer, 
that some degrees of loyalty were 
like gold, which were all the better 
for being tried in the furnace, and 
that, although there had once been a 
King James, and there was now a 
King George, the lady, of whom 
perhaps that gentleman was minded 
to speak, had done a notable Thing 
before he was born, which entitled 
her to the eternal gratitude of Kings. 

Although so old on her first coming 
to Hanover Square, and dwelling in 
it until her waiting-woman avowed 
that she was close on her ninetieth 
year, the Unknown Lady preserved 
her faculties in a surprising manner, 
and till within a few days of her pass- 
ing away went about her house, took 
the air from time to time in her coach, 
or in a chair, and received company. 
The very highest persons of Quality 
sought her, and appeared to take 
pleasure in her company. To Court, 
indeed, she never went ; but she was 
visited more than once by an illustrious 
Prince ; and many great nobles like- 
wise waited upon her in their Birthday 
suits. On Birthnights there was Play 
in the great drawing-room, where 
nothing but gold w r as permitted to be 
staked. 

Credible persons have described her 
to me as being, — in the extremest 


sunset of her life, when the very fray 
and fringe of her garment were come 
to, and no more stuff remained where- 
with to piece it, — a person of signal 
beauty. She was of commanding 
stature, stooped very little, albeit she 
made use of a crutch-stick in walking, 
and had a carriage full of graciousness, 
yet of somewhat austere Dignity. No 
portion of her hair was visible under 
the thick folds of muslin and point of 
Alenin which covered her head, and 
were themselves half hidden by a hood 
of black Paduasoy ; but in a glass-case 
in her cabinet, among other relics of 
which I may have presently to speak, 
she kept a quantity of the most beau- 
teous chestnut tresses ever beheld. 
“ These were my love-locks, child, ” 
I remember her saying to me once. 
I am ashamed to confess that, during 
my brief commerce with her, the 
dress she wore, which was commonly 
of black velvet, and the diamonds 
which glittered on her hands and arms 
and bosom impressed themselves far 
more forcibly on my memory than her 
face, which I have since been told was 
Beautiful. My informant bears wit- 
ness that her eyes were Blue, and of 
an exceeding brightness, sometimes 
quite terrible to look upon, although 
tempered at most times by a sweet 
mildness ; yet there were seasons 
when this brightness, as that of the 
Sun in a wholly cloudless sky, became 
fierce, and burnt up him who beheld 
it. Time had been so long a husband- 
man of her fair demesne, had reaped 
so many crops of smiles and tears 
from that comely visage, that it were 
a baseness to infer that no traces of 
his husbandry appeared on her once 
smooth and silken flesh, for the adorn- 
ment of which she had ever disdained 
the use of essences and unguents. Yet 
I am told that her wrinkles and creases, 
although manifold, were not harsh or 
rugged; and that her face might be 
likened rather to a billet of love written 
on fair white vellum, that had been 
somewhat crumpled by the hand of him 
who hates Youth and Love, than to 
some musty old conveyance or mort- 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


gage-deed scrabbled on yellow, damp- 
stained, rat-gnawed parchment. Her 
hands and neck were to the last of an 
amazing whiteness. The former, as 
were also her feet, very small and del- 
icate. Her speech when moved was 
quick, and she spoke as one accustomed 
to be obeyed ; but at most seasons her 
bearing towards her domestics was 
infinitely kind and tender. Towards 
the foreign person, her chaplain, she 
always bore herself with edifying meek- 
ness. She was cheerful in company, 
full of ready wit, of great shrewdness, 
discretion, and observation ; could dis- 
course to admiration of foreign cities 
and persons of renown, even to Kings 
and Princes, wham she had seen and 
known ; and was well qualified to 
speak on public affairs, although she 
seldom deigned to concern herself with 
the furious madness of Party. Mere 
idle prattle of operas, and play-books, 
and auctions, and the like, were ex- 
tremely distasteful to her ; and although 
at that time a shameful looseness of 
manners and conversation obtained 
even among the Greatest persons in 
the land, she would never suffer any 
evil or immodest talk to be held in her 
presence; and those who wished to 
learn aught of the wickedness of the 
town and the scandals of High Life 
were fain to go elsewhere for their 
gossip. 

I have said that her dress was to 
me the chief point of notice, and is 
that of which I retain the keenest re- 
membrance. Her diamonds, indeed, 
had over me that strange fascination 
which serpents are said to have over 
birds ; and I would sit with my little 
mouth all agape, and my eyes fixed 
and staring, until they grew dazed, 
and I was frightened at the solemn 
twinkling of those many gems. In 
my absurd child-way, it was to my 
fancy as though the Lady were some 
great altar or herse of state in a church, 
and her Jewels so many Lamps 
kindled about her, and to be kept 
alive forever. She robed habitually, 
as I have said, in Black Velvet ; but 
t>n Birthnights, when more company 


than usual came, and there was play 
in the great drawing-room, she would 
wear a sack of sad-colored satin ; 
while, which was stranger still, on the 
thirtieth day of January in every year, 
at least so long as I can keep it in 
mind, she wore her sable dress ; not 
her ordinary one, but a fuller garment, 
which had bows of Crimson Ribbon 
down the front and at the sleeves, and 
a great Crimson Scarf over the right 
shoulder, so as to come crosswise over 
her Heart. And on the day she made 
this change she wore no diamonds, 
but Rubies in great number, and of 
great size. On that day, also, we 
kept an almost entire fast, and from 
morning to night I had nothing but a 
little cake and a glass of Red Wine. 
From sunrise to sunset the Lady sat 
in her cabinet among her relics ; and 
I was bidden to sit over against her 
on a little stool. She would talk 
much, and, as it seemed to me wildly, 
in a language which I could not un- 
derstand, going towards her relics and 
touching them in a strange manner. 
Then she would say to me, with a 
sternness that chilled the marrow in 
my bones, “ Child, Remember the 
Day : Remember the Thirtieth of 
January.” And she would often re- 
peat that word, u Remember, ” rocking 
herself to and fro. And more than 
once she would say, “ Blood for blood.” 
Then Mistress Talmash would enter 
and assay to soothe her, telling her 
that what was past was past, and 
could not be undone. Then she would 
take out a great Prayer-Book bound 
in red leather, and which had a strange 
device embossed in gold, on either 
cover, and in a solemn voice read out 
long passages, which I afterwards 
learned were from that service holden 
on the anniversary of the martyrdom 
of King Charles the First. She would 
go on to read the Ritual for the King’s 
Touching for the Evil, now expunged 
from our Book of Common Prayer ; 
and then Mistress Talmash would pray 
her to read the joyful prayers for the 
twenty-ninth of May, the date of the 
happy restoration of King Charles the 
10 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


Second. But that she would seldom 
do, murmuring, “ I dare not, I dare 
not. Tell not Father Ruddlestone.” 
All these things were very strange to 
me ; but I grew accustomed to them 
in time. And there seems to be an 
immensity of time passing to a solitary 
child between his first beginning to 
remember and his coming to eight 
years of age. 

There is one thing that I must men- 
tion before this Lady ceases to be Un- 
known to the reader. She was af- 
flicted with a continual trembling of 
the entire frame. She was no paraly- 
tic, for to the very end she could take her 
food and medicine without assistance ; 
but she shook always like a very aspen. 
It had to do with her nerves, I suppose ; 
and it was perhaps for that cause she 
was attended for so many years by 
Doctor Vigors ; but he never did her 
any good in that wise ; and the whole 
College of Warwick Lane would, I 
doubt not, have failed signally had 
they attempted her cure. Often I 
asked Mistress Talmash why the Lady 
— for until her death I knew of no 
other name whereby to call her — shook 
so ; but the waiting-woman would 
chide me, and say that if I asked 
questions she would Shake me. So 
that I forebore. 

Ours was a strange and solemn 
household. All was stately and well 
ordered, and — when company came — 
splendid ; but the house always seemed 
to me much gloomier than the great 
parish-church, whither I was taken 
every Sunday morning on the shoulder 
of a tall footman, and shut up alone 
in a great Pew lined with scarlet baize, 
and where I felt very much like a 
little child that was lost in the midst 
of the Red Sea. Far over my head 
hung a gallery full of the children of 
Lady Viellcastel’s charity-school ; and 
these, both boys and girls, would make 
grimaces at me while the Psalms were 
being sung, until I felt more frightened 
than when I was on my little stool in 
the cabinet of relics, on the the thirtieth 
of January. Just over the ledge of 
my pew I could sec the clergyman, in 


his large white wig, leaning over the 
reading-desk, and talking at me, as I 
thought, in a mighty angry manner ; 
and when he, or another divine, after- 
wards ascended the pulpit above, I 
used to fancy that it was only the same 
clergyman grown taller, and with a 
bigger wig, and that he seemed to lean 
forward, and be angrier with me than 
ever. The time of kneeling was al- 
ways one of sore trouble to me, for I 
had to feel with my foot for the hassock, 
which seemed to lie as far beneath me 
as though it were sunk at the bottom 
of the Red Sea. Getting up again 
was quite as difficult ; and I don’t 
think we ever attained the end of the 
Litany without my dropping my great 
red Prayer-Book — not the thirtieth-of- 
January one — with a clang. On such 
occasions the pew-door would open, 
and the beadle enter. He always 
picked up the book, and gave it me 
with a low bow ; but he never omitted 
to tell me, in a deadly whisper, that 
if I had been one of Lady Viellcastel’s 
boys, he’d skin me alive, he would. 

The Unknown Lady did not attend 
the parish-church. She, and Mistress 
Talmash, and the foreign person, held 
a service apart. I was called “ Little 
Master, ” and went with the footman. 
The fellow’s name, I remember, was 
Jeremy. He used to talk to me, going 
and coming, as I sat, in my fine laced 
clothes, and my hat with a plume iu 
it, and my little rapier with the silver 
hilt, perched on his broad shoulder. 
He used to tell me that he had been a 
soldier, and had fought under the 
Duke of Marlborough ; and that he 
had a wife, who washed bands and 
ruffles for the gentlemen of the Life 
Guard, and drank strong waters till 
she found herself in the roundhouse. 
Always on a Sunday morning, as the 
church-bells began to ring, the Un- 
known Lady would give me a guinea 
to put into the plate after service. I 
remember that the year before she 
died, when I was big enough to walk 
with my hand in Jeremy’s, instead of 
being carried, that he told me ou 
Easter-Sunday morning that his wife 

11 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


was dead, and that he had two children 
in a cellar who had no bread to eat. 
He cried a good deal ; and before we 
reached the church, took me into a 
strange room in a back-street, where 
there were a number of men and wo- 
men shouting and quarelling, and 
another, without his wig and with a 
great gash in his forehead, sprawling 
on the ground, and crying out “ Lilli- 
bulero ! ” and two more playing cards 
on a pair of bellows. And they were 
all drinking from mugs and smoking 
tobacco. Here Jeremy had something 
to drink, too, from a mug. He put 
the vessel to my lips, and I tasted 
something Hot, which made me feel 
very faint and giddy. When we were 
in the open air again, he cried worse 
than ever. What could I do but give 
him my guinea? On our return to 
Hanover Square, the Lady asked me, 
according to her custom, what was the 
text, and whether I had put my money 
into the plate. She was not strict 
about the first; for I was generally 
from my tenderness of years unable to 
tell her more than that the gentleman 
in the wig seemed very angry with 
me, and the Pope, and the Prince of 
Darkness ; but she always taxed me 
smartly about the guinea. This was 
before the time that I had learned to 
Lie ; and so I told her how I had 
given the piece of gold to Jeremy, for 
that his wife was no more, and his 
children were in a cellar with nothing 
to eat. She stayed a while looking at 
me with those blue eyes, which had 
first their bright fierceness in them 
and then their kind and sweet tender- 
ness. It was the first time that I 
marked her eyes more than her dress 
and her diamonds. She took me in 
her lap, and printed her lips — which 
■were very soft, but cold — upon my 
forehead. 

“ Child, ” she said, “ did I use thee 
as is the custom, thou shouldst be 
whipped, not kissed, for thy folly and 
disobedience. But you knew not what 
you did. Here are two guineas to 
: put into the plate next Sunday ; and 
let no rogues cozen you out of it. As 


for Jeremy,” she continued, turning 
to Mistress Talmash, “ see that the 
knave be stripped of his livery, and 
turned out of the house this moment, 
for robbing my Grandson, and taking 
him on a Sabbath morning to taverns, 
among grooms, and porters, and sharp- 
ers, and bullies.” 

Yes ; the Unknown! Lady was my 
Grandmother. I purpose now to re- 
late to you her History, revealed to 
me many years after her death, in a 
manner to be mentioned at the proper 
time. 

Chapter the Third. 

THE HISTORY OF MY GRANDMOTHER, 
WHO WAS A LADY OF CONSEQUENCE 
IN THE WEST COUNTRY. 

My Grandmother was born at Bristol, 
about the year 1630, and in the reign 
of King Charles the First. She came 
of a family noted for their long lives, 
and of whom there was, in good sooth, 
a proverb in the West setting forth 
that u Bar gallows, glaive, and the 
gout, every Greenville would live to a 
hundred.” Her maiden name was 
Greenville : she was baptized Arabella ; 
and she was the only daughter of 
Kichard Greenville, an Esquire of a 
fair estate between Bath and Bristol, 
where his ancestors had held their' 
land for three hundred years, on a 
jocular tenure of presenting the king, 
whenever he came that way, with a 
goose-pie, the legs sticking through 
the crust. It was Esquire Green- 
ville’s misfortune to come to his estate 
just as those unhappy troubles were 
fomenting which a few years after 
embroiled these kingdoms in one great 
and dismal Quarrel. It was hard 
for a gentleman of consequence in his 
own country, and one whose fore- 
fathers had served the most consider- 
able offices therein, — having been of 
the Quorum ever since the reign of 
King Edward the Third, — to avoid 
mingling in some kind or another iu 
the dissensions wherewith our beloved 
country was then torn Mr. Green- 
ville was indeed a person of a tranquil 

12 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


and placable humor, to whom party 
j anglings were thoroughly detestable ; 
and although he leant naturally, as 
beseemed his degree, towards the up- 
holding of his Majesty’s Crown and 
Dignity, and the maintenance in proper 
Honor and Splendor of the Church, he 
was too good a Christian and citizen 
not to shrink from seeing his native 
land laid waste by the blind savage- 
ness of a Civil War. And although 
he paid cess and ship-money without 
murmuring, and, on being chosen a 
Knight of the Shire, did zealously 
speak up in the Commons’ House of 
Parliament on the King’s side (re- 
fusing nevertheless to make one of the 
lip-serving crowd of courtiers of White- 
hall) , and although, when churchwar- 
den in his parish, he ever preserved 
the laudable custom of Whitsun and 
Martinmas ales for the good of the 
poor, and persisted in having the Book 
of Sports read from the pulpit, — he 
was averse from all high-handed meas- 
ures of musketooning and pike-stab- 
bing those of the meaner sort, or those 
of better degree (as Mr. Hampden, 
Mr. Pym, and Another whom I shud- 
der to mention), who, for conscience 
sake, opposed themselves to the King’s 
Government. He was in this wise at 
issue with some of his hotter Cavalier 
neighbors, as, for instance, Sir Basil 
Fauconberge, who, whenever public 
matters were under question, began 
with “ Neighbor, you must first show 
me Pym, Hampden, Haslerigge, and 
the rest, swinging upon a gallows, and 
then I will begin to chop logic with 
you.” For a long time Mr. Greenville, 
my Great-grandfather (and my ene- 
mies may see from this that I am of 
no rascal stock), cherished hopes that 
affairs might be brought to a shape 
without any shedding of blood ; but 
his hope proved a vain and deceiving 
one ; ungovernable passions on either 
side caused not alone the drawing of 
the sword, but the flinging away of 
the scabbard ; and my Grandmother 
was yet but a schoolmaid at Madam 
Ribotte’s academy for gentlewomen at 
Bristol when that dreadful, sinful war 


broke out which ended in the barbar- 
ous murder of the Prince, and the un- 
doing of these kingdoms. 

Mr. Greenville had two children : a 
son, whose name, like his own, was 
Richard, and who was born some five 
years before his sister Arabella. Even 
as a child she was exceedingly beau- 
tiful, very gracious, fair, grave, and 
dignified of deportment, with abundant 
brown hair, and large and lustrous 
blue eyes, which, when the transient 
tempests of childhood passed over 
her, were ever remarked as having a 
strange, wild, fierce look, shared in 
sometimes by the males of her family. 
Her mother, to her sorrow, died when 
she was quite a babe. The Esquire 
was passionately fond of this his only 
daughter ; but although it was torture 
for him to part with her, and he re- 
tained her until she was thirteen years 
of age in his mansion-house, where 
she was instructed in reading and de- 
votion, pickling and preserving (and 
the distilling of strong waters), samp- 
ler work, and such maidenly parts of 
education, by the housekeeper, and by 
a governante brought from London, — 
he had wisdom enough to discern and 
to admit that his daughter’s genius 
was of a nature that required and de- 
manded much higher culture than 
could be given to her in an old country 
seat, and in the midst of talk about 
dogs and horses and cattle and gunning 
and ploughing, and the continual dis- 
putes of hot-headed Cavaliers or bitter 
Parliamentarians, who were trying 
who should best persuade my Great- 
grandfather to cast in his lot with one 
or the other of the contending parties. 
His son Richard had already made 
his election, and, it is feared, by having 
recourse to usurious money-scriveners 
in Bristol and London, had raised a 
troop of horse for the service of the 
King. Moreover, Arabella Greenville 
was of a very proud stomach and un- 
bending humor. She might be led, 
but would not be driven. She adored 
her father, but laughed at the com- 
mands of the governante, and the 
counsels of the housekeeper, who knew 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


not how either to lead or to rule her. 
It was thus determined to send her to 
Madam Ribotte’s academy at Bristol, 
— for even so early as King Charles’s 
time had outlandish and new-fangled 
names been found for Schools ; and 
thither she was accordingly sent, with 
instructions that she was to learn all 
the polite arts and accomplishments 
proper to her station, that she was to 
be kept under a strict regimen, and 
corrected of her faults ; but that she 
was not to be thwarted in her reason- 
able desires ; was to have her pony, 
with John coachman on the skewball 
sent to fetch her every Saturday and 
holiday ; was not to be overweighted 
with tedious and dragging studies ; 
and was by no means to be subject to 
those shameful chastisements of the 
ferula and the rod, which, even within 
my own time, I blush to say had not been 
banished from schools for young gen- 
tlewomen. To sum up, Miss Arabella 
Greenville went to school with a 
pocketful of guineas, and a play-chest 
full of sweet-cakes and preserved fruits, 
and with a virtual charter for learning 
as little as she chose, and doing pretty 
well as much as she liked. 

Of course my Grandmother ran a 
fair chance of being wholly spoiled, 
and growing up to one of those ter- 
magant romps we used to laugh at 
in Mr. Colley Cibber’s plays. The 
school-mistress fawned upon her, for 
although untitled, Esquire Greenville 
(from whom my descent is plain) was 
one of the most considerable of the 
County Gentry ; the teachers were 
glad when she would treat them from 
her abundant store of guineas; and 
she was a kind of divinity among 
the school-maids her companions, to 
whom she gave so many cakes and 
sweetmeats that the apothecary had 
to be called in about once a week. 
But this fair young flower-bed was 
saved from blight and choking weeds, 
first, by the innate rectitude and no- 
bility of her disposition, which (save 
only when that dangerous look was in 
her eyes) taught her to keep a rein 
over her caprices, and subdue a too 


warm and vigorous imagination ; next, 
by the entire absence of vanity and 
self-conceit in her mind, — a happy 
state, which made her equally alive to 
her own faults and to the excellencies 
of others ; and, last, by her truly pro- 
digious aptitude for polite learning. 
I have often been told that but for 
adverse circumstances Mrs. Greenville 
must have proved one of the most 
learned, as she was one of the wittiest 
and best-bred, women of her age and 
country. In the languages, in all 
manner of fine needlework, in singing 
and fingering instruments of music, in 
medicinal botany and the knowledge 
of diseases, in the making of the most 
cunning electuaries and syllabubs, and 
even in arithmetic, — a science of which 
young gentlewomen were then almost 
wholly deficient, — she became, before 
she was sixteen years of age, a truly 
wonderful proficient. A Bristol book- 
seller spoke of printing her book of 
recipes (containing some excellent 
hints on cookery, physic, the casting 
of nativities, and farriery) ; and some 
excellent short hymns she wrote are, 
I believe, sung to this day in one of 
the Bristol free-schools. But the talent 
for which she was most shiningly 
remarkable was in that difficult and 
laborious art of Painting in Oils. Her 
early drawings, both in crayons and 
Chinese ink, were very noble ; and 
there are in this House now some 
miniatures of her father, brother, and 
school-companions, limned by her in 
a most delicate and lovely fashion ; 
but ’twas in oils and in portraiture of 
the size of life that she most surpassed. 
She speedily out-went all that the best 
masters of this craft in Bristol could 
teach her ; and her pictures — especially 
one of her father, in his buff coat and 
breastplate, as a Colonel of the Militia 
— were the wonder, not only of Bristol, 
but of all Somerset and the counties 
adjacent. 

About this time those troubles in 
the West, with which the name of 
Prince Rupert is so sadly allied, grew 
to be of such force and fury as to de- 
cide Mr. Greenville on going to Lon- 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 




don, taking liis daughter Arabella 
with him, to make interest with the 
Parliament, so that peril might be 
averted from his estate. F or although 
his son was in arms for King Charles, 
and he himself was a gentleman of 
approved loyalty, he had done nothing 
of an overt kind to favor King or Par- 
liament. He thus hoped, having ever 
been a peaceable and law-worthy gen- 
tleman, to preserve his lands from 
peril, and himself and family from 
prosecution ; and it is a great error to 
suppose that many honest gentlemen 
did not so succeed in the very fiercest 
frenzy of the civil wars in keeping 
their houses over their heads, and their 
heads upon their shoulders. Witness 
worthy Mr. John Evelyn of W otton and 
Sayes’ Court, and many other persons 
of repute. 

While the Esquire was intent on 
his business at Westminster, and set- 
tling the terms of a Fine, without 
which it seemed even his peaceable 
behavior could not be compounded, he 
lay at the house of a friend, Sir For- 
tunatus Geddings, a Turkey merchant, 
who had a fair house in the street 
leading directly to St. Paul’s Church, 
just without Ludgate. The gate has 
been pulled down this many a day, 
and the place where he dwelt is now 
called Ludgate Hill. As he had much 
going to and fro, and was afraid that 
his daughter might come to hurt, both 
in the stoppage to her schooling, and 
in the unquietness of the times, he 
placed her for . a while at a famous 
school at Hackney, under that famous 
governante Mrs. Desaguiliers. And 
here she had not been for many weeks 
ere the strangest adventure in the 
world — as strange as any one of my 
own — befel her. The terrible battle 
of Naseby had by this time been 
fought, and the King’s cause was 
wholly ruined. Among other Cava- 
liers fortunate enough to escape from 
that deadly fray, and who were in 
hiding from the vengeance of the usurp- 
ing government, was the Lord Francis 
V — rs, younger son to that hapless 
Duke of B — m who was slain at 


Portsmouth by Captain F — n. It 
seems almost like a scene in a comedy 
to tell ; and, indeed, I am told that 
Tom D’Urfey did turn the only merry 
portion of it into a play ; but it appears 
that, among other shifts to keep his 
disguise, the Lord Francis, who was 
highly skilled in all the accomplish- 
ments of the age, was fain to enter 
Mrs. Desaguilier’s school at Hackney 
in the habit of a dancing-master, and 
that as such he taught corantoes and 
rounds to the young gentlewomen. 
Whether the governante, who was 
herself a staunch Royalist, winked at 
the deception, I know not; but her 
having done so is not improbable. 
Stranger to tell, the Lord Francis 
brought with him a companion who 
was, forsooth, to teach French and the 
lute, and who was no other than Cap- 
tain Richard, son to the Esquire of 
the W est country, and who was like- 
wise inveterately pursued by the Usurp- 
er. The brother recognized his sister, 
to what joy and contentment on both 
their parts I need not say ; but ere the 
false dancing-master had played his 
part many days, he fell madly in love 
with Arabella Greenville. To her 
sorrow and wretchedness, my poor 
Grandmother returned his flame. N ot 
that the Lord Francis stands convicted 
of any base designs upon her. I am 
afraid that he had been as wild and 
as reckless as most of the young nobles 
of his day ; but for this young woman 
at least his love was pure and honor- 
able. He made no secret of it to his 
fast friend, Captain Richard (my 
Grand-uncle), who would soon have 
crossed swords with the spark had any 
villany been afloat ; and he made no 
more ado, as was the duty of a Brother 
jealous of his sister’s fair fame, but to 
write his father word of what had 
chanced. The Esquire was half ter- 
rified and half flattered by the honor 
done to his family by the Lord Francis. 
The poor young man was under the 
very sternest of proscriptions, and it 
was openly known that if the Parlia- 
ment laid hold on him his death was 
certain. But, on the other hand, the 
15 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


Esquire loved liis daughter above all 
things ; aud one short half-hour, passed 
with her alone at Hackney, persuaded 
him that he must either let Arabella’s 
love-passion have its vent, or break 
her heart forever. And, take my 
word for it, you foolish parents who 
would thwart your children in this the 
most sacred moment of their lives, — 
thwart them for no reasonable cause, 
but only to gratify your own pride of 
purse, avarice, evil tempers, or love 
of meddling, — you are but gathering 
up bunches of nettles wherewith to 
scourge your own shoulders, and strew- 
ing your own beds with shards and 
pebbles. Take the advice of old John 
Dangerous, who suffered his daughter 
to marry the man of her choice, and 
is happy in the thought that she enjoys 
happiness ; and I should much wish 
to know if there be any Hatred in the 
world so dreadful as that curdled love, 
as that reverence decayed, as that 
obedience in ruins, you see in a proud 
haughty daughter married against her 
will to one she holds m loathing, and 
who points her finger, and says within 
herself, u My father and mother made 
me marry that man, and I am Mis- 
erable.” 

It was agreed amongst those who 
had most right to come to an agree- 
ment in the matter, that as a first step 
the Lord Francis V — s should betake 
himself to some other place of hiding, 
as more in keeping with Mrs. Green- 
ville’s honor ; but that, with the consent 
of her father and brother, he should 
be solemnly betrothed to her ; and 
that, so soon as the troubles were 
over, or that the price which was 
upon his head were taken off, he should 
beeome her husband. And there was 
even a saving clause added, that if 
the national disturbances unhappily 
continued, Mrs. Greenville should be 
privately conveyed abroad, and that 
the Lord Francis should marry her 
so soon after a certain lapse of time 
as he could conveniently get beyond 
sea. My Lord Duke of 13 — m had 
nothing to say against the match, 
loving his brother, as he did very 


dearly ; and so, in the very roughest 
of times, this truest of true loves 
seemed to bid fair to have a smooth 
course. 

But alas the day! My Grand- 
mother’s passion for the young Lord 
was a very madness. On his part, 
he idolized her, calling her by names 
and writing her letters that are non- 
sensical enough in common life, but 
which are not held to be foolish pleas 
in Love’s Chancery. When the boy 
and girl — for they were scarcely more 
— parted, she gave him one of her 
rich brown tresses ; he gave her one 
of his own dainty love-locks. They 
broke a broad piece in halves between 
them ; each hung the fragment by a rib- 
bon next the heart. They swore eternal 
fidelity, devotion. Naught but death 
should part them, they said. Foolish 
things to say and do, no doubt ; but I 
look at my grizzled old head in the 
glass, and remember that I have said 
and done things quite as foolish, forty 
— fifty years ago. 

Nothing but Death was to part them ; 
and nothing but Death so parted them. 
The Esquire Greenville, his business 
being brought to a plesant termination, 
having paid his Fine and gotten his 
Safe-Conduct and his Redemption from 
Sequestration, betook himself once 
more to the West. His daughter 
went with him, nourishing her love 
and fondling it, and dwelling, syllable 
by syllable, on the letters which the 
Lord Francis sent her from time to 
time. He was in hopes, he said, to 
get away to Holland. 

Then came that wicked business of 
the King’s murder. Mr. Greenville, 
as became a loyal gentleman, was 
utterly dismayed at that horrid crime ; 
but to Arabella the news was as of 
the intelligence of the death of some 
loved and revered friend. She wept, 
she sobbed, she called on Heaven to 
shower down vengeance on the Mur- 
derers of her gracious Prince. She 
had not heard from her betrothed for 
many days, and those who loved and 
watched her had marked a strange 
wild way with her. 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


It was on the third of February 
that the dreadful news of the White- 
hall tragedy came to her father’s house. 
She was walking on the next day 
very moodily in the garden, when the 
figure of one booted and spurred, and 
with the stains of many days’ travel 
on his dress, stood across her path. 
He was but a clown, a mere boor ; he 
had been a plough-boy on her father’s 
lands, and had run away to join Cap- 
tain Richard, who had made him a 
trumpeter in his troop. What he had 
to say was told in clumsy speech, in 
hasty broken accents, with sighs and 
stammerings and blubberings ; but he 
told his tale too well. 

The Lord Francis V — s and Cap- 
tain Richard Greenville — Arabella’s 
lover, Arabella’s brother — were both 
Dead. On the eve of the fatal thirtieth 
of January they had been taken cap- 
tives in a tilt-boat on the Thames, in 
which they were endeavoring to escape 
down the river. They had at once 
been tried by a court-martial of rebel 
officers ; and on the thirtieth day of 
that black month, by express order 
sent from the Lord General Cromwell 
in London, these two gallant and un- 
fortunate gentlemen had been shot to 
death by a file of musketry in the 
courtyard of Hampton Court Palace. 
The trumpeter had by a marvel es- 
caped, and lurked about Hampton till 
the dreadful deed was over. He had 
sought out the sergeant of the firing 
party, and questioned him as to the 
last moments of the condemned. The 
sergeant said they died as Malignants, 
and without showing any sign of pen- 
itence ; but he could not gainsay that 
their bearing was soldier-like. 

Arabella heard this tale without 
moving. 

“ Did the Captain — did my brother 
— say aught before they slew him?” 
she asked. 

“Nowt but this, my lady: ‘God 
forgive us all ! ’ ” 

“And the Lord Francis, said he 
aught ? ” 

“Ay; but I dunno loike to tell.” 

“ Say on.” 

2 17 


“ ’Twas t’ Sergeant tould un. A’ 
blessed the King, and woud hev’ t’ 
souldiers drink ’s health, but they 
wouldno’. And a’ wouldno’ let un 
bandage his eyes ; an’ jest befoar t’ 
red cwoats fired, a’ touk a long lock 
o’ leddy’s hair from ’s pocket and 
kissed un, and cried out, ‘ Bloud for 
Bloud ! ’ and then a’ died all straight 
along.” 

Mrs. Arabella Greenville drew from 
her bosom a long wavy lock of silken 
hair, — his hair, poor boy ! — and kissed 
it, and crying out “ Blood for Blood ! ” 
fell down in the garden-path in a dead 
faint. 

She did not Die, however, being 
spared for many Purposes, some of 
them Terrible, until she was nearly 
ninety years of age. But her first 
state was worse than death ; she lying 
for many days in a kind of trance or 
lethargy, and then waking up to rav- 
ing madness. For the best part of 
that year she was a perfect maniac, 
from whom nothing could be got but 
gibberings and plungings, and cease- 
less cries of “ Blood for Blood ! ” The 
heir-at-law to the estate, now that the 
Esquire’s son was dead, watched her 
madness with a keen avaricious desire. 
He was a sour Parliament man, who 
had pinned his faith to the Common- 
wealth, and done many Awakening 
things against the Cavaliers, and he 
thought now that he should have his 
reward, and Inherit. 

It was so destined, however, that 
my Grandmother should recover from 
that malady. On her beauty it left 
surprisingly few traces. You could 
only tell the change that had taken 
place in her by the deathly paleness 
of her visage, by her never smiling, 
and by that fierce expression in her 
eyes being now an abiding instead of 
a passing one. Beyond these, she 
was herself again ; and after a little 
while went to her domestic concerns, 
and chiefly to the cultivation of that 
pleasing art of painting in oils in which 
she had of old time given such fair 
promise of excellence. Her father 
would have had several most ingenious 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


examples of History and Scripture 
pieces by the Italian and Flemish 
masters bought for her to study by, — 
such copies being then very plentiful, 
by reason of the dispersing of the col- 
lections of many noblemen and gen- 
tlemen on the King’s side ; but this 
she would not suffer, saying that it 
were waste of time and money, and, 
with astonishing zeal, applied herself 
to the branch of portraiture. From a 
little miniature portrait of her dead 
Lord, drawn by Mr. Cooper, she 
painted in large many fair and noble 
presentments, varying them according 
to her humor, — now showing the Lord 
Francis in his panoply as a man of 
war, now in a court habit, now in an 
embroidered night-gown and Turkish 
cap, now leaning on the shoulder of 
her brother, the Captain, deceased. 
And anon she would make a ghastly 
image of him lying all along in the 
courtyard at Hampton Court, with the 
purple bullet-marks on his white fore- 
head, and a great crimson stain on his 
bosom, just below his bands. This 
was the one she most loved to look 
upon, although her father sorely 
pressed her to put it by, and not dwell 
on so uncivil a theme, the more so as, 
in crimson characters, on the back- 
ground she had painted the words 
“Blood for Blood.” But whatever 
she did was now taken little account 
of, for all thought her to be dis- 
traught. 

By and bye she fell to quite a new 
order in her painting. She seemed 
to take infinite pleasure in making 
portraitures of Oliver Cromwell, 
who had by this time become Lord 
Protector of the Commonwealth. She 
had never seen that bold bad man 
(the splendor of whose mighty achieve- 
ments must forever remain tarnished 
by his blood-guiltiness in the matter 
of the King’s death); but from des- 
criptions of his person, for which she 
eagerly sought, and from bustos, pic- 
tures, and prints cut in brass, which 
she obtained from Bristol and else- 
where, she produced some surprising 
resemblances of him who was now 


the Greatest Man in England. She 
painted him at full and at half length 
— in full-face, profile, and three-quar- 
ter ; but although she would show her 
work to her intimates, and ask eagerly 
“ Is it like — is it like him ! ” she would 
never part with one copy (and there 
were good store of time-servers ready 
to buy the Protector’s picture at that 
time), nor could any tell how she dis- 
posed of them. 

This went on until the summer of 
the year 1657, when her father gently 
put it to her that she had worn the 
willow long enough, and would have 
had her ally herself with some gentle- 
man of worth and parts in that part 
of the country. For the poor Esquire 
desired that she should be his heiress, 
and that a man-child should be born 
to the Greenville estate, and thus the 
heir-at-law, who was a wretched attor- 
ney at Bristol, and more bitter against 
kings than ever, should not inherit. 
She was not to be moved, however, 
towards marriage ; saying softly that 
she was already wedded to her Frank 
in Heaven, — for so she spoke of the 

Lord Francis V s ; and that her 

union had been blessed by her brother 
Dick, who was in Heaven too, with 
King Charles and all the blessed Army 
of Martyrs. And I have heard, in- 
deed, that the unhappy business of the 
King’s death was the means of so 
crazing, or casting into a sad celibacy 
and devouring melancholy, multitudes 
of comely young women who were 
born for love and delights, and to be 
the happy mothers of many children. 

So, seeing that he could do nothing 
with her, and loth to use any unhand- 
some pressure towards one whom he 
loved as the apple of his eye, the Es- 
quire began to think it might divert 
her mind to more cheerful thoughts 
if she quitted for a season that part of 
the country (for it was at Home that 
she had received the dreadful news of 
her misfortune); and, Sir Fortunatus 
Geddings and his family being ex- 
tremely willing to receive her, and do 
her honor, he despatched Arabella to 
London, under protection of Mr. Lan- 

18 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


drail, his steward, a neighbor of his, 
Sir Hardress Eustis, lending his coach 
for the journey. 

Being now come to London, every 
means which art could devise, or kind- 
ness could imagine, were made use of 
by Sir Fortunatus, his wife, and daugh- 
ter, to make Arabella’s life happier. 
But I should tell you a strange thing 
that came about at her father’s house 
the day after she left it for the town. 
Mr. Greenville chancing to go in a 
certain long building by the side of his 
pleasure-pond that was used as a boat- 
house, when, to his amazement, he 
sees, piled up against the wall, a num- 
ber of pictures, some completed, some 
but half finished, but all representing 
the Lord Protector Cromwell. But 
the strangest thing about them was, 
that in every picture the canvas about 
the head was pricked through and 
through in scores of places with very 
fine sharp holes, and, looking around 
in his marvel, he found an arbalest or 
cross-bow, with some very sharp bolts, 
and was so led to conjecture that some 
one had been setting these heads of 
the Protector up as a target, and shoot- 
ing bolts at them. He was at first 
minded to send an express after his 
daughter to London to question her if 
she knew aught of the matter ; but on 
second thoughts he desisted, remem- 
bering that in the Message, almost, 
(as the times stood) there was Treason, 
and concluding that, after all, it might 
be but some idle fancy of Arabella, 
and part of the demi-craze under 
which she labored. For there could 
be no manner of doubt that the pic- 
tures, if not the holes in them, were 
of her handiwork. 

Meanwhile Arabella was being en- 
tertained in the stateliest manner by 
Sir Fortunatus Geddings, who stood 
in great favor with the government, 
and had, during the troubles, assisted 
the Houses with large sums of money. 
There were then not many sports or 
amusements wherewith a sorrowing 
maiden could be diverted ; for the 
temper of England’s Rulers was against 
vain pastimes and junketings. The 


Maypoles had been pulled down ; the 
players whipped and banished ; the 
bear and bull baitings, and even the 
mere harmless minstrelsy and ballad- 
singing of the streets, all rigorously 
pulled down. But whatever the wor- 
thy Turkey merchant and his house- 
hold could do in the way of carrying 
Arabella about to suppers, christen- 
ings, country gatherings, and so forth, 
was cheerfully and courteously done. 
Sir Fortunatus maintained a coach 
(for he was one of the richest mer- 
chants in the City of London) , and in 
this conveyance Arabella was ofttimes 
taken to drive in Hyde Park, or to- 
wards the Uxbridge Road. ’Twas on 
one of these occasions that she first 
saw the Protector, who likewise was 
in his coach, drawn by eight Holstein 
mares, and attended by a troop of 
Horse, very gallantly appointed, with 
scarlet livery coats, bright gorgets and 
back-pieces, and red plumes in their 
hats. 

“ He is very like, very like,” she 
murmured, looking long and earnestly 
at the grand cavalcade. 

“ Like unto Whom, my dear ? ” 
asked Mrs. Nancy Geddings, the 
youngest daughter of Sir Fortunatus, 
who was her companion in the coach 
that day. 

“Very like unto him who is at Home 
in the West yonder,” she made an- 
swer. “ Now take me back to Lud- 
gate, Nancy sweet, for I am sick.” 

She was to be humored in every- 
thing, and she was taken home as she 
desired. It chanced, a few days after 
this, that word came that his Highness 
the Lord Protector of the Common- 
wealth of England (for to such state 
had Oliver grown) designed to visit 
the City, to dine with the citizens at 
Guildhall. There was to be a great 
pageant. He was to be met at Temple 
Bar by the Mayor and Aldermen, and 
to be escorted towards Chcapsidc by 
those city Trainbands which had done 
such execution on the Parliament side 
during the wars, and by the Companies 
with their Livery banners. Foreign 
ambassadors were to bear him coin- 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


pany ; for Oliver was then at the 
height of his power, and had made 
the name of Kngland dreaded, and 
even his own prowess respected, by all 
nations that were beyond sea. He 
was to hear a sermon at Bow Church 
at noon, and at two o’clock — for the 
preacher was to be Mr. Hugh Peters, 
who always gave his congregation a 
double turn of the hour-glass — he was 
to dine at the Guildhall, where I know 
not how many geese, bustards, capons, 
pheasants, ruffs and reeves, sirloins, 
shoulders of veal, pasties, sweet pud- 
dings, jellies, and custards, with good 
store of Rhenish and Canary, and Bor- 
delais and Burgundian wines, were 
provided to furnish a banquet worthy 
of the day. For although the Protec- 
torate was a stern sad period, and 
Oliver was (or had schooled himself 
to be) a temperate man, the citizens 
had not quite forgotten their love of 
good cheer ; and the Protector himself 
was not averse from the keeping up 
some state and splendor, Whitehall 
being now well-nigh as splendid as in 
the late King’s time, and his Highness 
sitting with his make-believe lords 
around him (Lisle, Whitelock, and 
the rest), and eating his meat to the 
sound of Trumpets, and being other- 
wise puffed up with Vanity. 

The good folks with whom Arabella 
was sojourning thought it might help 
to cure her of her sad moping ways 
if she saw the grand pageant go by, 
and mingled in the merriment and 
.feasting which the ladies of Sir For- 
tunatus’s family — the Knight himself 
being bidden to the Guildhall — pro- 
posed to give their neighbors on the 
day when Oliver came into the City. 
To this intent, the windows of their 
house without Ludgate were all taken 
out of their frames, and the casements 
themselves hung with rich cloths and 
tapestries, and decked with banners. 
And an open house was kept, literally, 
meats and wines and sweets being set 
out in every room, even to the bed- 
chambers, and all of the Turkey mer- 
chant’s acquaintance being bidden to 
come in and help themselves, and take 


a squeeze at the windows to see his 
Highness go by. Only one window 
on the first floor was set apart, and 
here sat the ladies of the family, with 
Mistress Deborah Clay, the Remem- 
brancer’s lady, and one that was sister 
to a Judge of Commonwealth’s Bench, 
and Arabella Greenville, who was 
for a wonder quite cheerful and 
sprightly that morning, and who had 
for her neighbor one Lady Lisle, the 
wife of John Lisle, one of Cromwell’s 
Chief Councillors and Commissioners 
of the Great Seal. 

The time that passed between theii 
taking seats and the coming of the 
pageant was passed pleasantly enough ; 
not in drinking of healths, which 
practice was then considered as closely 
akin to an unlawful thing, but in 
laughing and quaffing, and whispering 
of merry jests. For I have usually 
found that, be the Rule of Church 
and State ever so sour and stern, folks 
will laugh and quaff and jest on the 
sly, and be merry in the green tree, 
if they are forced to be sad in the 
dry. 

There was a gentleman standing 
behind Arabella, a^counsellor of Lin- 
coln’s Inn I think, who was telling a 
droll story of Mr. President Bradshaw 
to his friend from the Temple. Not 
greatly a person of whom to relate 
merry tales, I should think, that terri- 
ble Bencher, who sat at the head of 
the High Commission, clothed in his 
scarlet robe, and passed judgment 
upon his lord the King. But still 
these gentlemen laughed loud and long, 
as one told the other how the President 
lay very sick, sick almost to death, at 
his country house ; and how, he being 
one that was in the Commission of the 
Chancellorship, had taken them away 
with him, anfl would by no means 
surrender them, keeping them under 
his pillow, night and day ; wherefore 
one of his brother commissioners was 
fain to seek him out, and press him 
hard to give up the seals, saying that 
the business of the nation was at a 
standstill, for they could neither seal 
patents nor pardons. But all in vain, 

20 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


Bradshaw crying out in a voice that, 
though weak, was still terrible, that 
he would never give them up, but 
would carry them with him into the 
next world ; whereat quoth the other 
commissioner, 44 By — , Mr. Presi- 
dent , they will certainly melt if you do.” 
And at this tale the gentleman from 
Lincoln’s Inn and he from the Temple 
both laughed so, that Arabella, who 
had been listening without eavesdrop- 
ping, burst into a fit of laughter too ; 
only my Lady Lisle (who had likewise 
heard the story) regarded her with a 
very grim and dissatisfied countenance, 
and murmured that she thought a little 
trailing up before the Council, and 
committing to the Gate-house, would 
do some popinjays some good, and 
cure them of telling tales as treasonable 
as they were scurrilous. 

But now came a great noise of 
trumpets and hautboys and drums, and 
the great pageant came streaming up 
towards Ludgate, a troop of Oliver’s 
own Body-Guard on iron-gray chargers 
clearing the way, which they did with 
scant respect for the lives and limbs 
of the crowd, and with very little scru- 
ple either in bruising the Trainbands 
with their horses’ hoofs and the flat of 
their broadswords. As Arabella leant 
forward to see the show approach, 
something hard, and it would seem of 
metal, that she carried beneath her 
mantle, struck against the arm of my 
Lady Lisle, who, being a woman of 
somewhat quick temper, cried out, — 

44 Methinks that you carry a pocket- 
flask with you, Mistress Greenville, 
instead of a vial of essences. That 
which you have must hold a pint at 
least.” 

44 I do carry such a flask, ” an- 
swered Arabella, “and, please God, 
there are those here to-day who shall 
drink of it even to the Dregs.” 

This speech was afterwards remem- 
bered against her as a proof of her 
Intent. 

All, however, were speedily too 
busy with watching the show go by to 
take much heed of any word passage 
between the two women. Now it was 


Mistress Deborah Clay pointing out 
the Remembrancer to her gossip ; now 
the flaunting banners of the Companies, 
now the velvet robes of the Lord of 
the Council were looked upon ; now a 
great cry arose that his Highness was 
coming. 

He came in his coach drawn by 
eight Holstein mares, one of his lords 
by his side, and his two chaplains, 
with a gentleman of the bed-chamber 
sitting over against. He wore a rich 
suit of brown velvet puffed with white 
satin, a bright gorget of silver, — men 
said that he wore mail beneath his 
clothes, — boots and gauntlets of yellow 
Spanish, a great baldric of cloth-of- 
gold, and in his hat a buckle of dia- 
monds and a red feather. Yet, bravely 
as he was attired, those who knew 
him declared that they had never seen 
Oliver look so careworn and so miser- 
able as he did that day. 

By a kind of fate, he turned his 
glance upwards as he passed the house 
of the Turkey merchant, and those 
cruel eyes met the fierce gaze of Ara- 
bella Greenville. 

44 Blood for Blood ! ” she cried out 
in a loud clear voice ; and she drew 
a Pistol from the folds of her mantle, 
and fired downwards, and with unerr- 
ing aim, at the Protector’s head. 

My Lady Lisle saw the deed done. 
“ Jezebel ! ” she shrieked, striking the 
weapon from Arabella’s hand. 

Oliver escaped unharmed, but by an 
almost miracle. The bullet had struck 
him, as it was aimed, directly in the 
centre of his forehead, he wearing his 
hat much slouched over his brow ; but 
it had struck — not his skull, but the 
diamond buckle, and glancing off from 
that hard mass, sped out of the coach- 
window again, on what errand none 
could tell, for it was heard of no more. 
I have often wondered what became 
of all the bullets I have let fly. 

The stoppage of the coach ; the 
Protector half stunned ; the chaplain 
paralyzed with fear ; the Trainbands 
in a frenzy — half of terror, half of 
strong drink — firing off their pieces 
hap-hazard at the windows, and shout- 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


ing out that this was a plot of the 
Papists or the Malignants ; the crowd 
Burging, the Body-Guard galloping to 
and fro ; the poor standard-bearers 
tripping themselves up with their own 
poles, — all this made a mad turmoil 
in the street without Ludgate. But 
the Protector had speedily found all 
his senses, and had whispered a word 
or two to a certain Sergeant in whom 
he placed great trust, and pointed his 
finger to a certain window. Then the 
Sergeant being gone away, orders 
were given for the pageant to move 
on ; and through Ludgate, and by 
Paul’s, and up Cheape, and to Bow 
Church, it moved accordingly. Mr. 
Hugh Peters preached for two hours 
as though nothing had happened. 
Being doubtless under instructions, he 
made not the slightest allusion to the 
late tragic Attempt ; and at the ban- 
quet afterwards at the Guildhall there 
were only a few trifling rumors that 
his Highness had been shot at by a 
mad woman from a window in Fleet 
Street ; denial, however, being speed- 
ily given to this by persons in Author- 
ity, who declared that the disturbance 
without Ludgate had arisen simply 
from a drunken soldier of the Train- 
bands firing his musketoon into the air 
for Joy. 

But the Sergeant, with some soldiers 
of the Protector’s own, walked tran- 
quilly into the house of Sir Fortunatus 
Geddings, and into the upper chamber, 
where the would-be Avenger of Blood 
was surrounded by a throng of men 
and women gazing upon her, half in 
horror, and half in admiration. The 
Sergeant beckoned to her, and she 
arose without a murmur, and went 
with him and the soldiers, two only 
beings left as sentinels, to see that no 
one stirred from the house till orders 
came. By this time, from Ludgate 
to Blackfriars all was soldiers, the 
crowd being thrust away east and west ; 
and, between a lane of pikemen, Ara- 
bella was brought into the street, hur- 
ried through the narrow lanes behind 
Apothecaries’ Hall, and so through the 
alleys to Blackfriars Stairs, where a 


barge was in waiting, which bore her 
swiftly away to Whitehall. 

“You have flown at high game, 
mistress, ” was the only remark made 
to her by the Sergeant. 

She was locked up for many hours 
in an inner chamber, the windows 
being closed, and a lamp set on the 
table. They bound her, but, mindful 
of her sex and youth, not in fetters, or 
even with ropes, contenting themselves 
with fastening her arms tightly behind 
her with the Sergeant’s silken sash. 
For the Sergeant was of Cromwell’s 
own guard, and was of great authority. 

At about nine at night the Sergeant 
and two soldiers came for her, and so 
brought her, through many corridors, 
to Cromwell’s own chamber, where 
she found him still with his hat and 
baldric on, sitting at a table covered 
with green velvet. 

“ What prompted thee to seek my 
Life ? ” he asked, without anger, but 
in a slow, cold searching voice. 

“ Blood for Blood ! ” she answered, 
with undaunted mien. 

“ What evil have I done thee that 
thou shouldst seek my blood ? ” 

u What evil — what evil, Moloch ? 
— all ? Thou hast slain the King my 
Lord and master. Thou hast slain 
the dear brother who was my play- 
mate, and my father’s hope and pride. 
Thou hast slain the sweet and gallant 
youth who was to have been my hus- 
band.” 

“ Thou art that Arabella Greenville, 
then, the daughter of the wavering 
half-hearted Esquire of the West.” 

“ I am the daughter of a gentleman 
of long descent. I am Arabella 
Greenville ; and I cry for vengeance 
for the blood of Charles Stuart, for 
the blood of Richard Greenville, for 
the blood of Francis Villiers. Blood 
for Blood ! ” 

That terrible gleam of Madness 
leapt out of her blue eyes, and, all 
bound as she was, she rushed towards 
the Protector as though in her fury 
she would have spurned him with her 
foot, or torn him with her teeth. The 
Sergeant for his part made as though 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


he would have drawn his sword upon 
her ; but Oliver laid his hand on the 
arm of his officer, and bade him 
forbear. 

44 Leave the maiden alone with me,” 
lie said calmly ; 44 wait within call. 
She can do no harm.” Then, when 
the soldiers had withdrawn, he walked 
to and fro in the room for many 
minutes, ever and anon turning his 
head and gazing fixedly on the pris- 
oner, who stood erect, her head high, 
her hands, for all their bonds, clenched 
in defiance. 

44 Thou knowest,” he said, 44 that 
thy Life is forfeit.” 

44 I care not. The sooner the bet- 
ter. I ask but one Mercy : that you 
send me not to Tyburn, but to Hamp- 
ton Court ; there to be shot to death 
in the court-yard by a file of musket- 
eers.” 

44 Wherefore to Hampton ? ” 

44 Because it was there you murdered 
my Lover and my Brother.” 

44 I remember,” the Protector said, 
bowing his head. 44 They were rare 
Malignants, both. I Remember; it 
was on the same thirtieth of January 
that Charles Stuart died the death. 
But shouldst thou not, too, bear in 
mind that Vengeance is not thine, but 
the Lord’s? ” 

44 Blood for Blood ! ” 

44 Thou art a maiden of a stern 
Resolve and a strong Will,” said the 
Protector musingly. 44 If thou art 
pardoned, wilt thou promise repent- 
ance and amendment ? ” 


44 Blood for Blood ! ” 

44 Poor distraught creature,” this 
once cruel man made answer, 44 1 will 
have no blood of thine. I have had 
enough,” he continued, with a dark 
look and a deep sigh ; I am weary ; 
and Blood will have Blood. But that 
my life was in Mercy saved for the 
weal of these kingdoms, thou mightst 
have done with me, Arabella Green- 
ville, according to thy desires.” 

He paused, as though for some 
expression of sorrow ; but she was 
silent. 

44 Thou art hardened,” he resumed ; 
44 it may be that there are things that 
cannot be forgiven.” 

44 There are,” she said firmly. 

44 1 spare thy life,” the Lord Pro- 
tector continued ; 44 but Arabella Green- 
ville, thou must go into Captivity. 
Until I am Dead, we two cannot be 
at large together. But I will not 
doom thee to a solitary prison. Thou 
shalt have a companion in durance. 
Ves,” he ended, speaking between his 
teeth, and more to himself than to 
her, 44 she shall join Him yonder in 
his lifelong prison. Blood for Blood ; 
the Slayer and the Avenger shall be 
together.” 

She was taken back to her place of 
confinement, where meat and drink 
were placed before her, and a tiring- 
woman attended her with a change 
of garments. And at day-break the 
next morning she was taken away in 
a litter towards Colchester in Essex. 


23 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


Chapter the Fourth. 

MY GRANDMOTHER DIES, AND I AM 

LEFT ALONE, WITHOUT SO MUCH 

AS A NAME. 

I have sat over against Death 
unnumbered times in the course of a 
long and perilous life, and he has ap- 
peared to me in almost every shape ; 
but I shall never forget that Thirtieth 
of January in the year ’20, when 
my Grandmother died. I have seen 
men all gashed and cloven about — a 
very mire of blood and wounds, — and 
heads lying about on the floor like 
ninepins, among the Turks, where a 
man’s life is as cheap as the Half- 
penny Hatch. I was with that famous 
Commander Baron Trenck when his 
Pandours — of whom I was one — 
broke into Mutiny. He drew a pistol 
from his belt, and said, “I shall 
decimate you.” And he began to 
count Ten, “one, two, three, four,” 
and so on, till he came to the tenth 
man, whom he shot Dead. And then 
he took to counting again, until he 
was arrived at the second Tenth. 
That man’s brains he also blew out. 
I was the tenth of the third batch, but 
I never blenched. Trenck happily 
held his hand before he came to Me. 
The Pandours cried out that they 
would submit, although I never spoke 
a word ; he forgave us ; and I had a 
flask of Tokay with him in his tent 
that very after-dinner. I have seen a 
man keel-hauled at sea, and brought 
up on the other side, his face all larded 
with barnacles like a Shrove-tide 
capon. Thrice I have stood beneath 
the yardarm with the rope round my 
neck (owing to a king’s ship mistak- 
ing the character of my vessel). I 
have seen men scourged till the muscles 


of their backs were laid bare as in a 
Theatre of Anatomy ; I have watched 
women’s limbs crackle and frizzle in 
the flames at an Act of Faith, with 
the King and Court — ay, and the 
court-ladies too — looking on. I stood 
by when that poor mad wretch 
Damiens was pulled to pieces by 
horses in the Greve. I have seen 
what the plague could do in the gal- 
leys at Marseilles. Death and I have 
been boon companions and bedfellows. 
He has danced a jig with me on a 
plank, and ridden bodkin, and gone 
snacks with me for a lump of horse- 
flesh in a beleaguered town ; but no 
man can say that John Dangerous had 
aught but a bold face to show that 
Phantom who frights nursemaids and 
rich idle people so. 

And yet, now, I can recall the cold 
shudder that passed through my young 
veins when my Grandmother died. 
Of all days, too, that the Thirtieth of 
January should have been ordered for 
her passing away ! It was mid-winter, 
and the streets were white with Inno- 
cent Snow when she was taken ill. 
She had not been one of those trifling 
and trivanting gentlewomen that pull 
diseases on to their pates with drums and 
routs, and late hours, and hot rooms, 
and carding, and distilled waters. She 
had ever been of a most sober conver- 
sation and temperate habit ; so that 
the prodigious age she reached became 
less of a wonder, and the tranquillity 
with which her spirit left this dark- 
some house of clay seemed mercifully 
natural. They had noticed, so early 
as the autumn of ’19, that she was 
decaying; yet had the roots of life 
stricken so strongly into earth as to 
defy that Woodman who pins his faith 
to shaking blasts at first, but when he 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


finds that windfalls will not serve his 
turn, and that although leaves decay, 
and branches are swept away, and the 
very bark is stripped off, the tree dies 
not, takes heart of grace, and lays 
about him with his Axe. Then one 
blow with the sharp suffices. So for 
many months Death seemed to let her 
be, as though he sat down quietly by 
her side, nursing his bony chin, and 
saying, “ She is very old and weak ; 
yet a little, and she must surely be 
mine.” Mistress Talmash appeared 
to me, in the fantastic imagination of 
a solitary childhood, to take such a 
part, and play it to the Very Death ; 
and there were sidelong glances from 
her eyes, and pressures of her lips, 
and a thrusting forth of her hands 
when the cordial or the potion was to 
be given, that seemed to murmur, 
“ Still does she Tarry, and still do I 
W ait.” This gentlewoman was never 
hard or impatient with my Grand- 
mother ; but towards the closing scene, 
for all the outward deference she ob- 
served towards her, ’twas she who 
commanded, and the Unknown Lady 
who obeyed. Nor did I fail to mark 
that her bearing was towards me fuller 
of a kind of stern authority than she 
had of aforetime presumed to show, 
and that she seemed to be waiting for 
me too, that she might work her will 
upon me. 

The ecclesiastic Father Ruddlestone 
was daily, and for many hours, closeted 
with my kinswoman and benefactress ; 
and I often, when admitted to her 
presence after one of these parleys, 
found her much dejected and in Tears. 
He had always maintained a ghostly 
sway over her, and was in these latter 
days stern with her almost to harsh- 
ness. And although I have ever dis- 
dained eavesdropping and couching in 
covert places to hear the foregather- 
ings of my betters (which some hon- 
orable persons in the world’s reckoning 
scorn not to do), it was by Chance, 
and not by Design, that, playing one 
wintry day in the Witlulrawing-room 
adjoining the closet where my Grand- 
mother still sat among her relics, I 


heard high words — high, at least, as 
they affected one person, for the lady’s 
rose not above a mild coinplaint ; and 
Father Ruddlestone coming out, said 
in an angry tone : 

u My uncle saved the King’s life 
when he was in the Oak, and his soul 
when he was at Whitehall ; and I will 
do his bidding by you now.” 

M The Lord’s will be done, not 
mine,” said my Grandmother meekly. 

Then Father Ruddlestone passed 
into the Withdrawing-room, and see- 
ing me on a footstool, playing it is 
true at the Battle of Hochstedt with 
some leaden soldiers, and two wooden 
puppets for the Duke and Prince 
Eugene, but still all agape at the 
strange words that had hit my sense, 
he catches me a buffet on the ear, 
bidding me mind my play, and not 
listen, else I should hear no good of 
myself, or of what an osier wand 
might haply do to me. And that a 
change was coming was manifest even 
in this rude speech ; for my Grand- 
mother, albeit, of the wise King’s 
mind on the proper ordering of child- 
ren, and showing that she did not hate 
me when I needed chastening, would 
never suffer her Domestics, even to 
the highest, to lay a finger upon me. 

It was after these things, and while 
I was crying out, more in anger than 
with the smart of the blow, that she 
called me into her closet and soothed 
me, giving me to eat of that much 
prized sweetmeat she said was once 
such a favorite solace with Queen 
Mary of Modena, consort of the late 
King James, and which she only pro- 
duced on rare occasions. And then 
she bewailed my hurt, but bade me 
not vex her Director, who was a man 
of much holiness, full, when we were 
contrite, of healing and quieting 
words ; but then, of a sudden, nipping 
me pretty sharply by the arm, she 
said : 

“ Child, I charge thee that thou 
abandon that fair false race, and trust no 
man whose name is Stuart, and abide 
not by their fatal creed.” In remem- 
brance of which, although I am by 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


descent a Cavalier, and bound by 
many bonds to the old Noble House, — 
and surely there was never a Prince 
that carried about him more of the far- 
bearing blaze of Majesty than the 
Chevalier de St. G — , and bears it 
still, all broken as he is, in his Italian 
retreat, — I have ever upheld the 
illustrious House of Brunswick and 
the Protestant Succession as by Law 
Established. And as the barking of 
a dog do I contemn those scurril flouts 
and obloquies which have of old times 
tossed me upon tongues, and said of 
me that I should play fast and loose 
with Jacobites and Hanoverians, drink- 
ing the King over the W ater on my 
knees at night, and going down to 
the Cockpit to pour news of Jacobites 
and recusants and other suspected 
persons into the ears of Mr. Secretary 
in the morning. Treason is Death by 
the Law, and legal testimony is not to 
be gainsaid ; but I abhor those Iscariot- 
minded wretches, with faces like those 
who Torture the Saints in old Hang- 
ings, who cry, aha ! against the 
sanctuaries, and trot about to bear 
false witness. 

There were no more quarrels be- 
tween my Grandmother and her 
Director. Thenceforth Father Rud- 
dlestone ruled over her ; and one 
proof of his supremacy was, that she 
forwent the use of that Common 
Prayer-Book of our Anglican Church 
which had been her constant com- 
panion. From which I conjecture 
that, after long wavering and tempor- 
ising, even to the length of having the 
Father in her household, she had at 
length returned to or adopted the 
ancient faith. But although the Sub- 
stance of our Ritual was now denied 
her, she was permitted to retain its 
shadow ; and for hours would sit 
gazing upon the torn-off cover of the 
book, with its device of the crown 
and crossed axes, in sad memory of 
K. C. 1st. 

A most mournful Christmas found 
her still growing whiter and weaker, 
and nearer her End. At this ordinarily 
joyful season of the year, it was her 


commendable custom to give great 
alms away to the poor, — among whom 
at all times she was a very Dorcas, — 
bestowing not only gifts of money to 
the clergy for division among the 
needy, but sending also stf dole of a 
hundred shillings to the poor prisoners 
in the Marshalsea, as many to Lud- 
gate, and the Gatehouse, and the 
Fleet, — surely prisons for debt were 
as plentiful as blackberries when I was 
young ! — and giving away besides 
large store of bread, meat, and 
blankets at her own door in Hanover 
Square : a custom then pleasantly 
common among people of quality, but 
now — when your parish Overseer, 
forsooth, eats up the very marrow of 
the poor — fallen sadly into disuse. 
They are forever striking Poor’s Rates 
against householders, and will not take 
clipped money ; whereas in my day 
Private Charity, and a King’s Letter 
in aid from the pulpit now and then, 
were enough ; and, for my part, I 
would sooner see a poor rogue soundly 
firked at the post, and then comforted 
with a bellyful of bread and cheese 
and beer by the constable, and so 
passed on to his belongings, than that he 
should be clapped up in a workhouse, 
to pick oakum and suck his paws like 
a bear, while Master Overseer gets 
tun-stomached over shoulder of veal 
and burnt brandy at vestry-dinners. 
For it is well known, to the shame of 
Authority, that these things all come 
out of the Poor Rate. 

Ere my Grandmother was brought 
so low, she would sit in state on alms- 
giving morning, which was the day 
after Christmas ; and the more decent of 
her bedesmen and bedeswomen would 
be admitted to her presence to pay 
their duty, and drink her health in a 
cup of warm ale on the staircase. 
Also the little children from Lady 
Viellcastel’s charity-school would be 
brought to her by their governante to 
have cakes and new groats given to 
them, and to sing one of those sweet 
tender Christmas hymns which surely 
fall upon a man’s heart like sweet- 
scented balsam on a wound. And the 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


beadle of St. George’s would bring a 
great bow-pot of such hues as Christ- 
mas would lend itself to, and have a 
bottle of wine and a bright broad 
guinea for his fee ; while his Reverence 
the rector would attend with a suitable 
present, — such as a satin work-bag or 
a Good Book, the cover ’broidered by 
his daughters, — and when he sat at 
meat, find a bank-bill under his plat- 
ter, which was always of silver. And 
I warrant you his Reverence’s eyes 
twinkled as much at the bill as at the 
plum-porridge, and that he feigned not 
to see Father Ruddlestone, if perchance 
he met that foreign person on the 
staircase, or in the store-office where 
Mistress Nancy Talmash kept many 
a toothsome cordial and heart-warming 
strong water. 

This dismal Christmas none of 
these pleasant things were done. My 
Lady gave one Sum to her steward, 
Mr. Cadwallader, and bade him dis- 
pose of it according to his best judg- 
ment among the afflicted, bearing not 
their creed or politics or parish in 
mind, but their necessities. And I 
was bereft of a joyful day ; for in 
ordinary she would be pleased that I 
should be her little almoner, and hand 
the purses with the groats in them 
to the poor almsfolk. What has 
become, I wonder, of those good old 
customs of giving away things at 
Christmas-tides ? Where is the Lord 
Mayor’s dole of beef-pies to the va- 
grant people that lurk in St. Martitfs- 
le-Grand, that new Alsatia ? Where 
is the Queen’s gift of an hundred 
pounds to the distressed people who 
took up quarters in Somerset House ? 
Whsre are the thousand guineas which 
the Majesty of England was used to 
send every New-Year’s morning to 
the High Bailiff of Westminster to be 
parted among the poor of the Liberty ? 
Nothing seems to be given nowadays. 
’Tis more caning than cakes that is 
gotten by the charity children ; and 
master Collector, the Jackanapes, is 
for ever knocking at my door for 
Poor’s Rates. 

In the middle of January my 


Grandmother was yet weaker. Straw 
was laid before her door, and daily 
prayers — for of course the Rector 
knew nothing about Father Ruddle- 
stone — were put up for her at St. 
George’s. And I think also she was 
not forgotten in the orisons of those 
who attended the chapel of the Ve- 
netian Envoy, and in that permitted 
to the use of the French Ambassador. 
Doctor Vigors was now daily in 
attendance, with many other learned 
physicians, who almost fought in the 
antechambers on the treatment to be 
observed towards this sick person. 
One was for cataplasms of bran and 
Venice turpentine, another for putting 
live pigeons to her feet, another for a 
potion of hot wine strained through 
gold-leaf and mingled with hellebore 
and chips of mandrake. Warwick 
Lane suggested mint-tea, and Pall- 
Mall was all for bleeding. This Pall- 
Mall physician was about the most 
passionate little man, with the biggest 
ruffles and the tallest gold-headed cane 
I ever saw. His name was Toobey. 

“ Blood, sir ! there ? s nothing like 
blood ! ” he would cry to Doctor Vig- 
ors ; and he cried out for “ blood, sir,” 
till you might fancy that he was a 
butcher or a herald-at-arms, or a 
housewife making black puddings. 

Says Doctor Vigors in a Rage, “You 
are nothing but a barber-surgeon, 
brother, and learnt shaving on a 
sheep’s head, and phlebotomy on a 
cow that had the falling fever. ” 

“ Mountebank and quacksalver ! ” 
answers my passionate gentleman, 
“ you bought your diploma from one 
that forges seamen’s certificates in 
Sopar Lane. Go to, metamorphosed 
and two-legged ass ! Where is your 
worship’s stage in the Stocks Market, 
with pills to purge the vapors, and 
powders to make my lady in love with 
her footman, and a lying proclamation 
on every post, and a black boy behind 
you to beat on the cymbals when you 
draw out teeth with the kitchen 
pliers. ” 

“ Rogue ! ” screams Doctor Toobey, 
“ but for the worshipful house we are 
27 


The Strange Adventures 

in, I would batoon you to a mum- 
my” 

“ Mummy forsooth ! ” the other re- 
torts ; “ Mummy with a murrain ! 
Why, you dug up your grandmother, 
and pounded her up with conserve of 
myrrh, and called the stuff King 
Pharaoh, that was sovereign to cure 
the strangury. ” 

“ Better to do that,” quoth Toobey, 
calming down into mere give and take 
— for he had, in truth, done some 
droll things in mummy medicaments, 
— “ than to have been a Fleet parson, 
that was forced to sell ale and couple 
beggars for a living, and turned doctor 
when he had cured a bad leg for one 
that had lain too long in the bilboes. ” 

This was too much for Doctor Vig- 
ors, who had once been in orders, and 
was still a Nonjuror, winked at, for 
his skill’s sake, by Authority. He 
was for rushing on the Pall-Mall 
mummy-doctor and tousling of his wig, 
when Mistress Talmash came out of 
her lady’s closet, and told them that 
she was fainting. This was the way 
that doctors disagreed when I was 
young, and I fancy that they don’t 
agree much better now. 

She lingered on, however, still res- 
olutely refusing to take to her bed, 
and seeing me, if only for a moment, 
every day, for yet another fortnight. 
On the Twentieth of January, it was 
her humor to receive the visit of a 
certain great nobleman. Very many 
of the quality had daily waited upon, 
her, or had sent their gentlemen to 
inquire after her ; but for many weeks 
she had seen none but her own house- 
hold. The nobleman I speak of had 
lately come down from the Bath, 
where he had been taking the waters ; 
for he was full of years, and of Glory, 
and of infirmities. A message went 
to his grand house in Pall Mall, and 
he presently waited on my Grand- 
mother. He was closeted with her 
for an hour, when the tap -of my 
Grandmother’s cane against the wains- 
cot summoned Mistress Talmash, and 
she, doing her errand, brought me 
into the presence. 


of Captain Dangerous . . 

“ My Lord,” whispered my Grand- 
mother, as she drew me towards her, 
and gave me a kiss that was almost 
of a whisper too, so feebly gentle was 
it, — “My Lord Duke, will you be 
pleased to lay your hand on the boy’s 
head and give him your blessing, and 
it will make him Brave. ” 

1-Ie smiled sadly at her fancy, but 
did as she entreated. He laid a hand 
that was all covered with jewelled 
rings, and that shook almost as much 
as my Grandmother’s, on my locks, 
and prattled out to me something 
about being a good boy and not play- 
ing cards. He, too, was almost gone. 
He had a mighty wig, and velvet 
clothes all covered with gold-lace, a 
diamond star, and broad blue ribbon ; 
but his poor swollen legs were swathed 
in flannel, and he was so feeble that 
he had to be helped down-stairs by 
two lacqueys. I too ran down-stairs un- 
checked, and saw him helped, totter- 
ing, into his chair, a company of the 
Foot-guards surrounding it; for he 
was much misliked by the mobile at 
that time, and few cried, God bless 
him ! Indeed, as the company moved 
away, I heard a ragged fellow (who 
should have been laid by the heels for 
it) cry, “ There goes Starvation Jack, 
that fed his soldiers on boiled bricks 
and baked mortar. ” 

“ He is a Whig now,” said my 
Grandmother to me, when I rejoined 
her ; “ but he was of the bravest among 
en, and in the old days loved the true 
mg dearly.” 

When this man was young and 
poor, the mobile used to call him 
“ Handsome Jack.” When he was 
rich and old and famous, he was 
“ Starvation Jack” to them. And of 
such are the caprices of a vain, pre- 
cipitate age. But I am glad I saw 
him, Whig and pinchpenny as he was. 
I am proud of having seen this Great 
Captain and Prince of the Holy Bo- 
man Empire. The King of Prussia, 
the Duke of Cumberland, my Lord 
George Sackville, Marshal Biron, 
Duke Bichelieu, and many of the 
chiefest among the Turkish bashaws, 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


have I known and conversed with ; 
but I still feel that Man’s trembling 
hand on my head ; my blood is still 
fired, as at the sound of a trumpet, by 
the remembrance of his voice ; I still 
rejoice at my fortune in having set 
eyes, if only for a moment, on John 
Churchill, Duke of Marlborough. 

It was on the Twenty-ninth of Jan- 
uary (o. s.) that our servants, who 
had declared to having heard the death- 
watch ticking for days, asserted that 
those ominous sounds grew faster and 
faster, resolving themselves at length 
into those five distinct taps, with a 
break between, which are foolishly 
held by the vulgar to spell out the 
word death. And although the noise 
came probably from some harmless 
insect, or from a rat nibbling at the 
wainscot, that sound never meets my 
ear — and I have heard it on board 
ship many a time, and in gaol, and in 
my tent in the desert — without a lump 
of ice sliding down my back. As for 
Ghosts, John Dangerous has seen too 
many of them to be frightened. 

That night I slept none. It was 
always my lot in that huge house to 
be put, little fellow as I was, in the 
hugest of places. My bed was as 
spacious as a Turkish divan. Its 
yellow silken quilt, lined with eider- 
down, and embroidered with crimson 
flowers, was like a great waving field 
of ripe corn with poppies in it. When 
I lay down, great weltering waves of 
Bed came and rolled over me ; an<J 
my bolster alone was as big as the 
cook’s hammock at sea, who has al- 
ways double bedding, being swollen 
with other men’s rations. This bed 
had posts tall and thick enough to have 
been Gerard the Giant’s lancing-pole, 
that used to stand in the midst of the 
bakehouse in Basing Lane ; and its 
curtains of yellow taffety hung in folds 
so thick that I always used to think 
birds nestled among them. That night 
I dreamt that the bed was changed 
into our great red pew at St. George’s, 
only that it was hung with dark velvet 
instead of scarlet baize, and that the 
clergyman in the pulpit overhead, with 


a voice angrier than ever, was reading 
that service for the martyrdom of 
K. C. 1st, which I had heard so 
often. And then methought my dream 
changed, and two Great Giants with 
heading-axes came striding over the 
bed, so that I could feel their heavy 
feet on my breast; but their heads 
were lost in the black sky of the bed’s 
canopy. Horror ! they stooped down, 
and lo, they were headless, and from 
their sheared shoulders and their great 
hatchets dripped, dripped, forever 
dripped, great gouts of something hot 
that came into my mouth and tasted. 
Salt ! And I woke up with my hair 
all in a dabble with the night-dews, 
with my Grandmother’s voice ringing 
in my ears, u Remember the Thirtieth 
of January ! ” Mercy on me ! I had 
that dream again last night ; and the 
Giants with their axes came striding 
over these old bones — then they 
changed to a headless Spaniard and 
a bleeding Nun ; but the voice that 
cried, “ Remember ! ” spake not in the 
English tongue, and was not my Grand- 
mother’s. And the hair of my flesh 
stood up, as Job’s did. 

In the morning, when the clouds of 
night broke up from the pale winter’s 
sky, and went trooping away like so 
many funeral coach-horses to their 
stable, they told me. that my Grand- 
mother was Dead ; that she had passed 
away when the first cock crew, softly 
sighing, “ Remember.” It was a 
dreadful thing for me that I could not, 
for many hours, weep ; and that for 
this lack of tears I was reproached for 
a hardened ingrate by those who were 
now to be my most cruel governors. 
But I could not cry. The grief within 
me baked my tears, and I could only 
stare all round at the great desert of 
woe and solitude that seemed to have 
suddenly grown up around me. That 
morning, for the first time, I was left 
to dress myself; and when I crept 
down to the parlor, I found no break- 
fast laid out for me — no silver tankard 
of new milk with a clove in it, no 
manchet of sweet diet bread, no egg 
on a trencher in a little heap of salt. 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


I asked for my breakfast, and was 
told, for a young cub, that I might get 
it in the kitchen. It would have gone 
hard with me if, in my Grandmother’s 
time, I had entered that place to 
her knowledge ; but all things were 
changed to me now, and when I en- 
tered the kitchen, the cook, nay, the 
very scullion-wench, never moved for 
me. John Footman sat on the dresser 
drinking a mug of purl that one of the 
maids had made for him. The cook 
leered at me, while another saucy slut 
handed me a great lump of dry bread, 
and a black-jack with some dregs of 
the smallest beer at the bottom. What 
had I done to merit such uncivil treat- 
ment? 

By and by comes Mr. Cadwallader 
with a sour face, and orders me to my 
chamber, and get a chapter out of 
Deuteronomy by heart by dinner-time, 
“ Or you keep double fast for Martyr- 
dom-day, my young master,” he says, 
looking most evilly at me. 

“ Young master, indeed,” Mrs. 
Nancy repeated ; “ young master and 
be saved to us. A parish brat rather. 
No man’s child but his that to hit you 
must throw a stone over Bridewell 
Wall. Up to your chamber, little 
varlet, and learn thy chapter. There 
are to be no more counting of beads 
or mumblings over hallowed beans in 
this house. Up with you ; times are 
changed.” 

Why should this woman have been 
my foe ? She had been a cockering, 
fawning nurse to me not so many 
months ago. Months ! — yesterday. 
Why should the steward, who was 
used to flatter and caress me, now 
frown and threaten like some harsh 
taskmaster of a Clink, where wantons 
are sent to be whipped and beat hemp. 
I slunk away scared and cowed, and 
tried to learn a chapter out of Deuter- 
onomy ; but the letters all danced up 
and down before my eyes, and the 
one word “ Remember,” in great scar- 
let characters, seemed stamped on every 
page. 

It should have been told that be- 
tween my seventh and my eighth year 


I had been sent, not only to church, 
but to school; but my grandmother 
deeming me too tender for the besom 
discipline of a schoolmaster, — from 
which even the Quality were not at 
that time spared, — I was put under 
the government of a discreet matron, 
who taught not only reading and writ- 
ing, but also brocaded waistcoats for 
gentlemen, and was great caudle-maker 
at christenings. It was the merriest 
and gentlest school in the town. We 
were some twenty little boys and girls 
together, and all we did was to eat 
sweetmeats, and listen to our dame 
while she told us stories about Cock 
Robin, Jack the Giant-Killer, and the 
Golden Gardener. Now and then, to 
be sure, some roguish boy would put 
pepper in her snuff-box, or some saucy 
girl hide her spectacles ; but she never 
laid hands on us, and called us her 
lambs, her sweethearts, and the like 
endearing expressions. She was the 
widow of an Irish colonel who suffered 
in the year ’96, for his share in Sir 
John Fenwick’s conspiracy ; and I 
think she had been at one time a 
tiring-woman to my Grandmother, 
whom she held in the utmost awe and 
reverence. I often pass Mrs. Triplet’s 
old school-house in what is now called 
Major Foubert’s Passage, and recall 
the merry old days when I went to a 
schoolmistress who could teach her 
scholars nothing but to love her dearly. 
It was to my Grandmother, a kind but 
strict woman, to whom I owed what 
scant reading and writing ken I had 
at eight years of age. 

Rudely and disdainfully treated as 
I now was, my governors thought it 
fit, for the world’s sake, that I should 
be put into decent mourning ; for my 
grandmother’s death could not be kept 
from the Quality, and there was to be 
a grand funeral. She lay in State in 
her great bedchamber ; tapers in silver 
sconces all around her, an Achieve- 
ment of arms in a lozenge at her head, 
the walls all hung with fine black cloth 
edged with orris, and pieced with her 
escocheon, properly blazoned ; and she 
herself, white and sharp as waxwork 
30 


The Strange Adventures 

in her face and hands, arrayed in her 
black dress, with crimson ribbons and 
crimson scarf, and a locket of gold on 
her breast. They would not bury her 
with her rubies, but these, too, were 
laid upon her bier, which was of black 
velvet, and with a fair Holland sheet 
over all. 

Not alone the chamber itself, but 
the ante-rooms and staircase were 
hung from cornice to skirting with 
black. The undertaker’s men were 
ever in the house : they ate and drank 
whole mountains of beef and bread, 
whole seas of ale and punch (thus to 
qualify their voracity) in the servants* 
hall. They say my Grandmother’s 
funeral cost a thousand pounds, which 
Cadwallader and Mrs. Talmash would 
really have grudged, but that it was 
the will of the executors, who were 
persons of condition, and more power- 
ful than a steward and a waiting- 
woman. In her own testament my 
Grandmother said nothing about the 
ordering of her obsequies ; but her 
executors took upon them to provide 
her with such rites as beseemed her 
degree. In those days the Quality 
were very rich in their deaths ; and, 
for my part, I dissent from the starvel- 
ing and nipcheese performances of 
modern funerals. It is most true that 
a hole in the sand, or a coral-reef, 
full fathom five, has been at many 
times my likeliest Grave ; but I have 
left it nevertheless in my Will — which 
let those who come after me dispute 
if they dare — that I may be buried as 
a Gentleman of long descent, with all 
due Blacks, and Plumes, and Lights, 
and a supper for my friends, and 
mourning cloaks for six poor men. 

Why the doctors should have re- 
mained in the house jangling and 
glozing in the very lobby of Death, 
and eating of cold meats and drinking 
of sweet wine in the parlor, after the 
breath was out of the body of their 
patient and patroness, it passes me to 
say ; as well should a player tarry 
upon the Stage long after the epilogue 
has been spoken, the curtain lowered, 
and the lights all put out. Yet were 


of Captain Dangerous . 

Pall Mall and Warwick Lane faithful, 
not only unto the death, but beyond it, 
to Hanover Square. A coachful of 
these grave gentlemen were bidden to 
the burial, although it was probable 
that words would run so high among 
them as for wigs to be tossed out of 
the windows. And although it is but 
ill fighting and base fence to draw 
upon a foe in a coach, I think (so 
bitter are our Physicians against one 
another) that they would make but 
little ado in breaking their blades in 
halves and stabbing at one another 
crosswise as they sat, with their hand- 
kerchiefs for hilts. 

It was on the eighth night after her 
demise, and at half-past nine of the 
clock, that my Grandmother was 
Buried. I was dressed early in the 
afternoon in a suit of black, full 
trimmed, falling bands of white cam- 
bric, edged, and a little mourning 
sword with a crape knot, and slings 
of black velvet. Then Mrs. Talmash 
knotted round my neck a mourning- 
cloak that was about eight times too 
large for me, and with no gentle hand 
flattened on my head a hat bordered 
by heavy sable plumes. On the left 
shoulder of my cloak there was em- 
broidered in gold and colored silks a 
little escocheon of arms ; and with 
this, in my cliild-like way, my fingers 
hankered to play ; but with threats 
that to me were dreadful, and not 
without sundry nips and pinches, and 
sly clouts, I was bidden to be still, and 
stir not from a certain stool apportion- 
ed to me in the great Withdrawing- 
room. Not on this side of the tomb 
shall I forget the weary, dreary sense 
of desolation that came over me when, 
thus equipped, or rather swaddled and 
hampered in garments strange to me, 
and of which I scarcely knew the 
meaning, I was left alone for many 
hours in a dismal room, whose ancient 
splendor was now all under the eclipse 
wrought by the undertakers. And 
I pray that few children may so 
cruelly and suddenly have their hap- 
piness taken away from them, and 
from pampered darlings become all 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


at once despised and friendless out- 
easts. 

By and by the house began to fill 
with company ; and one that was act- 
ing as Groom of the Chambers, and 
marshalling the guests to their places, 
I heard whisper to the Harbinger, 
who first called out the names at the 
Stair-head, that Clarencieux, king-at- 
arms (who was then wont to attend 
the funerals of the Quality, and to be 
gratified with heavy fees for his office ; 
although in our days ’tis only public 
noblemen, generals, ambassadors, and 
the like, who are so honored at their 
interment, only undertaker’s pageantry 
being permitted to the private sort) — 
that Clarencieux himself might have 
attended to marshal the following, 
and proclaim the Style of the Depart- 
ed ; but that it was ordered by Author- 
ity that, as in her life her name and 
honors had been kept secret, so like- 
wise in her death she was to remain 
an Unknown Lady. How such a 
reticence was found to jump with the 
dictates of the law, which required a 
registry of all dead persons in the 
parish-books, I know not ; but in that 
time there were many things suffered 
to the Great which to the meaner kind 
would have been sternly denied ; and, 
indeed, I have since heard tell that 
sufferance even went beyond the con- 
cealment of her Name, and that she 
was not even buried in woollen — a 
tiling then very strictly insisted upon, 
in order to encourage the staple manu- 
factures of Lancashire and the North, 
— and that, either by a Faculty from 
the Arches Court, or a winking and 
conniving of Authority, she was placed 
in her coffin in the same garb in which 
she had lain in state. Of such sorry 
mocks and sneers as to the velvet of 
her funeral coffer being nearer Purple 
than crimson in its hue, and of my 
mourning cloak being edged with a 
narrow strip of a Violet tinge, — as 
though to hint in some wise that my 
Grandmother was foregathered, either 
by descent or by marital alliance with 
Royalty, — I take little account. ’Tis 
not everyone who is sprung from the 


loins of a King who cares to publish 
the particulars of his lineage, and 
John Dangerous may perchance be 
one of such discreet men. 

The doctors had been so long in the 
house that their names and their faces 
were familiar to me, not indeed as 
friends, but as that kind of acquaint- 
ance one may see every day for twenty 
years, and be not very grieved some 
morning if news comes that they are 
dead. Such an eye-acquaintance passes 
my windows every morning. I know 
his face, his form, his hat and coat, 
the very tie of his wig and the fashion 
of his shoe-buckle ; but he is no more 
to me than I am haply to him, and 
there would be scant weeping, I opine, 
between us if either of us were to die. 
So I knew these doctors and regarded 
them little, wondering only, why they 
ate and drank so much, and could so 
ill conceal their hatred as to be calling 
foul names, and -well-nigh threatening 
fisticuffs, while the corse of my Grand- 
mother was in the house. But of the 
body of those who were bidden to this 
sad ceremony, I had no knowledge 
whatsoever. For aught I knew, they 
might have been players or bullies 
and Piccadilly captains, or mere un- 
dertaker’s men dressed up in fine 
clothes ; yet, believe me, it is no fool- 
ish pride, or a dead vanity, that 
prompts me to surmise that there 
were those who came to my Grand- 
mother’s funeral who had a claim to 
be reckoned amongst the very noblest 
and proudest in the land. Beneath 
the great mourning cloaks and scarves, 
I could see diamond stars glistening, 
and the brave sheen of green anc 
crimson ribbons. I desire in this par 
ticularity to confine myself strictly to 
the Truth, and therefore make no vain 
boast of a Blue Ribbon being seen 
there, thus denoting the presence of a 
Knight of the most noble Order of the 
Garter. I leave it to mine enemies 
to lie, and to cowardly Jacks to boast 
of their own exploits. This brave 
gathering was not void of women ; 
but they were closely veiled and im- 
penetrably shrouded in their mourning 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, 


weeds, so that of tlieir faces and their 
figures I am not qualified to speak ; 
and if you would ask me that which I 
remember chiefly of the noble gentle- 
men who were present, I can say with 
conscience, that beyond their stars 
and ribbons, I was only stricken by 
their monstrous and portentous Peri- 
wigs, which towered in the candle- 
light like so many great tufts of 
plumage atop of the Pope’s Baldaquin, 
which I have seen so many times 
staggering through the great aisles of 
St. Peter’s at Rome. 

Your humble servant, and truly 
humble and forlorn he was that night, 
was placed at the coffin’s head ; it 
being part of that black night’s sport 
to hold me as Chief Mourner ; and, 
indeed, poor wretch, I had much to 
mourn for. The great plumed hat 
they had put upon me flapped and 
swaled over my eyes so as almost to 
blind me. My foot was forever catch- 
ing in my great mourning cloak, and 
I on the verge of tripping myself up ; 
and there was a hot smoke sweltering 
from the tapers, and a dreadful smell 
of new black cloth and sawdust and 
beeswax, that was like to have suffo- 
cated me. Infinite was the relief when 
two of the ladies attired in black, who 
had sat on either side of me, as though 
to guard me from running away, lifted 
me gently each under an armpit, and 
held me up so that I could see the 
writing on the coffin-plate, which was 
of embossed silver, and very brave to 
view. 

“ Can you read it out, my little 
man ? ” a deep rich voice as of a lady 
sounded in mine ears. 

I said, with much trembling, u that 
I thought I could spell out the words, 
if time and patience were accorded 
me.” 

“ There is little need, child,” the 
voice resumed. u I will read it to 
thee ; ” and a black-gloved hand came 
from beneath her robe, and she took 
my hand, and holding my fore-finger 
not ungently, made me trace the 
writing on the silver. But I declare 
that I can remember little of that 


Legend now, although I am impressed 
with the belief that my kinswoman’s 
married name was not mentioned. 
That it was merely set forth that she 
was the Lady D — , whose maiden 
name was A. G., and that she died in 
London in the 90th year of her age, 
King George I. being king of England. 
And then the smoke of the tapers, 
the smell of the cloth and the wax, 
and the remembrance of my Desola- 
tion, were too much for me, and I broke 
out into a loud wail, and was so car- 
ried fainting from the room ; being 
speedily, however, sufficiently recov- 
ered to take my place in the coach 
that was to bear us Eastward. 

We rode in sorrowful solemnity till 
nigh three o’clock that morning ; but 
where my Grandmother was buried I 
never knew. From some odd hints 
that I afterwards treasured up, it 
seems to me that the coaches parted 
company with the Hearse somewhere 
on the road to Harwich ; but of this, 
as I have averred, I have no certain 
knowledge. In sheer fatigue I fell 
asleep, and woke in broad daylight in 
the great state-bed at Hanover Square. 

Chapter the Fifth. 

I AM BARBAROUSLY ABUSED BY THOSE 

WHO HAVE CHARGE OF ME, AND 

FLYING INTO CHARLWOOD CHASE, 

JOIN THE “ BLACKS.” 

In the morning, the wicked people 
into whose power I was now delivered 
came and dragged me from my bed 
with fierce thumps, and giving me 
coarse and rude apparel, forced me to 
dress myself like a beggar boy. I 
had a wretched little frock and 
breeches of gray frieze, ribbed woollen 
hose and clouted shoes, and a cap that 
was fitter for a chimney-sweep than a 
young gentleman of Quality. I was 
to go away in the Wagon, they told 
me, forthwith to School ; for my 
Grandmother — if I was indeed any- 
body’s Grandson — had left me nothing, 
not even a name. Henceforth I was 
to be little Scrub, little Ragamuffin, 
little boy Jack. All the unknown 


o 


The Strange Adventures 

Lady’s property, they said, was left 
to Charities and to deserving Servants. 
There was not a penny for me, not 
even to pay for my schooling ; but, in 
Christian mercy, Mrs. Talmash was 
about to have me taught some things 
suitable for my new degree,. and in 
due time have me apprenticed, to 
some rough Trade, in which I might 
haply — if I were not hanged, as she 
hinted prettly plainly, and more than 
once — earn an honest livelihood. Mean- 
while I was to be taken away in the 
Wagon, as though I were a Malefac- 
tor going in a Cart to Tyburn. 

I was taken down-stairs, arrayed in 
my new garments of poverty and dis- 
grace, and drank in a last long look 
at my dear and old and splendid 
Home. How little did I think that I 
should ever come to look upon it again, 
and that it would be my own House 
— mine, a prosperous and honored old 
man ! The undertaker’s men were 
busied in taken down the rich hang- 
ings, and guzzling and gorging, as was 
their wont, on what fragments remain- 
ed of the banquetings and carousals 
of Death, which had lasted for eight 
whole days. All wretched as I was, 

I should — so easily are the griefs 
of childhood assuaged by cates and 
dainties — have been grateful for the 
wing of a chicken or a glass of Canary ; 
but this was not to be. John a’Nokes 
or John a’Styles were now more con- 
sidered than I was, and I was pushed 
and bandied about by fustian knaves 
and base mechanics, and made to 
wait for full half an hour in the hall, 
as though I had been the by-blow of 
a Running Footman promoted into 
carrying of a link. 

’Twas Dick the Groom that took 
me to the Wagon. Many a time he 
had walked by the side of my little 
pony, trotting up the Oxford Road. 
He was a gross unlettered churl, but 
not unkind ; and I think remembered 
with something like compunction the 
many pieces of silver he had had 
from his Little Master. 

“ It’s mortal hard,” he said, as he 
took my hand, and began lugging me 
along, . “ that your grandam should 


of Captain Dangerous . 

have died and left you nothing. Tis 
all clear as Bexley ale in a yard-glass. 
Lawyers ha’ been reading the will to 
the gentlefolks, and there’s nothing for 
thee, poor castaway.” 

I began to cry, not because my 
Grandmother had disinherited me, 
but because this common horse-lout 
called me a “ castaway,” and because 
I knew myself to be one. 

« Don’t fret,” the groom continued; 
“ there’ll be greet enough for thee 
when thou’rt older ; for thou’lt have a 
hard time on’t, or my name’s not Dick 
Snaffle.” 

We had a long way to reach the 
Wagon, which started from a Tavern 
called the “ Pillars of Hercules,” right 
on the other side of Hyde Park. I 
was desperately tired when we came 
thither, and craved leave to sit on a 
bench before the door, between the 
Sign-post and the Horse-trough. So 
low was I fallen. A beggar came 
alongside of me, and as I dozed tried 
to pick my pocket. There was nothing 
in it — not even a crust ; and he hit me 
a savage blow over the mouth because 
I had nothing to be robbed of. Anon 
comes Dick Snaffle, who, telling me 
that the Saddler of Bawtry was hang- 
ed for leaving his liquor, and that he 
had no mind for a halter while good ale 
was to be drunk, had been comforting 
himself within the tavern ; and he 
finding me all blubbered with grief at 
the blow I had gotten from the beg- 
gar, fetches him a sound kick ; and so 
the two fell to fighting, till out comes 
the tapster, raving at Tom Ostler to 
duck the cutpurse cadger in the Horse- 
trough. There was much more sport 
out of doors in my young days than now. 

At last the Wagon, for which we 
had another good hour to wait, came 
lumbering up to the Pillars of Hercu- 
les ; and after the Wagoner had fought 
with a Grenadier, who wanted to go 
to Brentford for fourpence, and would 
have stabbed the man with his bayonet 
had not his hand been stayed, the 
Groom took me up, and put me on the 
straw inside. He paid the Wagoner 
some money for me, and also gave 
into his keeping a little bundle, con- 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


taining, I suppose, some change of 
raiment for me, saying that more 
would be sent after me when needed ; 
and so, handing him, too, a letter, he 
bade me Godd’en, and went on his 
way with the Grenadier, a Sweep, and 
a Gipsy woman, who was importunate 
that he should cross her hand with 
silver, in order that he might know all 
about the great Fortune that he was 
to wed, as Tom Philbrick did in the 
ballad. And this was the way in 
which the Servants of the Quality spent 
their forenoons when I was young. 

As the great rumbling chariot 
creaked away westward, there came 
across my child-heart a kind of con- 
sciousness that I had been Wronged, 
and Cheated out of my inheritance. 
Why was I all clad in laces and vel- 
vet but yesterday, and to-day appareled 
like a tramping pedlar’s foster-brat? 
Why was I, who was used to ride in 
coaches, and on pony-back, and on the 
shoulder of my own body-servant, and 
was called “Little Master,” and made 
much of, to be carted away in a vile 
dray like this ? But what is a child 
of eight years old to do ? and how is 
he to make head against those who 
are older and wickeder than he ? I 
knew nothing about lawyers, or wills, 
or the Rogueries of domestics. I only 
knew that I had been foully and 
shamefully Abused since my dear 
Grandparent’s death ; and in that 
wagon, I think, as I lay tumbling and 
sobbing on that straw, were first plant- 
ed in me those seeds of a Wild, and 
sometimes Savage, disposition that 
have not made my name to be called 
“ Dangerous” in vain. 

We were a small and not a very 
merry company under the wagon tilt. 
There was a Tinker, with all his ac- 
coutrements of pots and kettles about 
him, who was lazy, as most Tinkers 
are when not at hard work, and lay 
on his back chewing straw, and curs- 
ing me fiercely whenever I moved. 
There was a Welsh gentleman, very 
ragged and dirty ; with a wife raggeder 
and dirtier than he. He was addressed 
as Captain, and was bound, he said, 
for Bristol, to raise soldiers for the 


King’s Service. He beat his wife now 
and then, before we came to Houns- 
low. There was the Tinker’s dog, a 
great terror to me ; for although he 
feigned to sleep, and to snore as much 
as a Dog can snore, he always kept 
one little red eye fixed upon me, and 
gave a growl and made a Snap when- 
ever I turned on the straw. There 
was the Wagoner’s child that was 
sickly, and continually cried for its 
mammy ; and lastly there was a buxom 
servant-maid, with a little straw hat 
and cherry ribbons over a Luton lace 
mob, and a pretty flowered gown 
pulled through the placket-holes, and 
a quilted petticoat, and silver buckles 
in her shoes, and black mits, who was 
going home to see her Grandmother 
at Stoke Pogis, — so she told me, and 
made me bitterly remember that I had 
now no Grandmother, — and was as 
clean and bright and smiling as a new 
pin, or the milkmaids on May morn- 
ing dancing round the brave Garlands 
that they have gotten from the silver- 
smiths in Cranbourn Alley. She sat 
prettily crouched up on her box in a 
corner ; and so, with the Tinker among 
his pots and kettles, the W elsh Captain 
and his Lady on sundry bundles of 
rags, the sickly child in a basket, the 
Tinker’s dog curled up in his Master’s 
hat, I tossing on the straw, and a great 
rout of crates of crockery, rolls of 
cloth, tea and sugar, and other London 
merchandise, which the Wagoner was 
’taking down West, as a return cargo 
for the eggs, poultry, butcher’s meat, 
and green stuff that he had brought 
up, made altogether such a higgledy- 
piggledy that you do not often see in 
these days, when Servant-maids come 
up by Coach — my service to them ! — 
and disdain the Wagon, and his Wor- 
ship the Captain wears a fine laced 
coat and a cockade in his hat, — who 
but he ! — and travels post. 

The Maid who was bound on a visit 
to her Grandmother was, I rejoice to 
admit, most tenderly kind to me. She 
combed my hair, and wiped away the 
tears that besmirched my face. When 
the Wagon halted at the King’s Arms, 
Kensington, she tripped down and 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


brought me a flagon of new milk with 
some peppermint in it ; and she told 
me stories all *the way to Hounslow, 
and bade me mind my book, and be a 
good child, and that Angels would love 
me. Likewise that she was being 
courted by a Pewterer in Panyer Alley, 
who had parted a bright sixpence with 
her — she showed me her token, drawn 
from her modest bodice, and who had 
passed his word to Wed, if he had to 
take to the Road for the price of the 
Ring — but that was only his funning, 
she said, — or if she were forced even 
to run away from her Mistress, and 
make a Fleet Match of it. It was 
little, in good sooth, that I knew about 
courtships or Love-tokens or Fleet 
Matches ; but I believe that a woman, 
for want of a better gossip, would 
open her Love-budget to a Baby or a 
Blind Puppy, and I listened so well 
that she kissed me ere we parted, and 
gave me a pocketful of cheese-cakes. 

It was quite night, and far beyond 
Hounslow, when I was dozing off 
into happy sleep again, that the Wagon 
came to a dead stop, and I awoke in 
great fright at the sound of a harsh 
voice asking if the Boy Jack was 
there. I was the “Boy Jack;” and 
the Wagoner, coming to the after-part 
of the tilt with his lantern, pulled me 
from among the straw with far less 
ado than if I had been the Tinker’s dog. 

I was set down on the ground before 
a tall man with a long face and an 
ugly little scratch wig, who had large 
boots with straps over his thighs, like 
a Farmer, and swayed about him with 
a long whip. 

“Oh, this is the boy, is it?” said 
the long man. “ A rare lump to lick 
into shape, upon my word.” 

I was too frightened to say aught ; 
but the Wagoner muttered something 
in the long man’s ear, and gave him 
my bundle and money and the letter ; 
and then I was clapped up on a pillion 
behind the long man, who had clomb 
up to the saddle of a vicious horse 
that went sideways ; and he, bidding 
me hold on tight to his belt, for a 
mangy young whelp as I was, began 
jolting me to the dreadful place°of 


Torture and Infernal cruelty which for 
six intolerable months was to be my 
home. 

This man’s name was Gnawbit, 
and he was my Schoolmaster. I was 
delivered over to him, bound hand 
and foot, as it were, by those hard- 
hearted folk (who should have been 
most tender to me, a desolate orphan) 
in Hanover Square. His name was 
Gnawbit, and he lived hard by West 
Drayton. 

We are told in Good Books about 
the Devil and his Angels ; but sure I 
think that the Devil must come to 
earth sometimes, and marry and have 
children : whence the Gnawbit race. 
I don’t believe that the man had one 
Spark of Human Feeling in him. I 
don’t believe that any tale of Man or 
Woman’s Woe would ever have wrung 
one tear from that cold eye, or drawn 
a pang from that hard heart. I be- 
lieve that he was a perfectly senseless, 
pitiless Brute and Beast, suffered, for 
some unknown purpose, to dwell here 
above, instead of being everlastingly 
kept down below, for the purpose of 
Tormenting. I was always a Dan- 
gerous, but I was never a Revengeful 
man. I have given mine enemy to 
eat when he was a-hungered, and to 
drink when he was athirst. I have 
returned Good for Evil very many 
times in this Troubled Life of mine, 
exposed as it has been always to the 
very sorest of temptations ; but I hon- 
estly aver, that were I to meet this 
Tyrant of mine, now, on a solitary 
island, I would mash his Hands with 
a Club or with my Feet, if he strove 
to grub up roots ; that were I Alone 
with him, wrecked, in a shallop, and 
there were one Keg of Fresh Water 
between us, I would stave it, and let 
the Stream of Life waste itself in the 
gunwales while I held his head down 
into the Sea, and forced him to swal- 
low the brine that should drive him 
Raving Mad. But this is unchristian, 
and I must go consult Doctor Dubiety. 

Flesh and Blood ! Have you never 
thought upon the Wrongs your Peda- 
gogue has wrought upon you, and 
longed to meet that Wretch, and wheal 


The Strange Adventures 

his flesh with the same instrument 
with which 'he whealed you, and make 
the Ruffian howl for mercy? Mercy, 
quotha ! did he ever show you any ? 

A pretty equal match it was, surely ! 
You a poor, weak starveling of a child 
shivering in your shoes, and ill-nur- 
tured by the coarse food he gave you, 
and he a great, hulking, muscular 
villain, tall and long-limbed, and all- 
powerful in his wretched Empire ; 
while you were so ignorant as not to 
know that the Law, were he discovered 
(but who- was to denounce him?), 
might trounce him for his barbarity. 
Ah ! brother Gnawbit, if I had ever 
caught you on board a good ship of 
mine ! Aha! knave, if John Danger- 
ous would not have dubbed himself 
the sheerest of asses, had he not made 
your back acquainted with nine good 
tails of three-strand cord, with triple 
knots in each, and the brine-tub after- 
wards. I will find out this Gnawbit 
yet, and cudgel him to the death. 
But, alas ! I rave. He must have been 
full five-and-forty years old when I 
first knew him, and that is nigh sixty 
years agone. And at a hundred and 
five the cruellest Tyrant is past cud- 
gelling. 

This man had one of the prettiest 
houses that was to be seen in the 
prettiest part of England. The place 
was all draped in ivy, and roses, and 
eglantine, with a blooming flower-gar- 
den in front, and a luscious orchard 
behind. He had a wife, too, who was 
Fair to see, — a mild, little woman, 
with blue eyes, who used to sit in a 
corner of her parlor, and shudder as 
she heard the boys shrieking in the 
schoolroom. There was an old infirm 
Gentleman that lodged with them, that 
had been a Captain under the renowned 
Sir Cloudesley Shovel and Admiral 
Russell, and could even, so it was 
said, remember, as a sea-boy, the 
Dutch being in the Medway, in King 
Charles’s time. This Old Gentleman 
seemed the only person that Gnawbit 
was afraid of. He never interfered to 
dissuade him from his brutalities, nay, 
seemed rather to encourage him there- 
in, crying out as the sounds of torture 

37 


of Captain Dangerous. 

reached him, “ Bear it ! bear it ! Good 
again ! Make ’em holloa ! Make ’em 
dance ! Cross the cuts ! Dig it in ! 
Rub in the brine ! Oho ! Bear it, 
brave boys ; there’s nothing like it ! ” 
Yet was there something jeering and 
sarcastic in his voice that made Gnaw- 
bit prefer to torture his unhappy scho- 
lars when the Old Gentleman was 
asleep, — and even then he would some- 
times wake up and cry out, “Bear 
it ! ” from the attic, or when he was 
being wheeled about the neighborhood 
in a sick man’s chair. 

The first morning I saw the Old 
Gentleman he shook his crutch at me, 
and cried, “ Aha ! another of ’em ! 
Another morsel for Gnawbit. More 
meat for his market. Is he plump ? 
is he tender ? Will he bear it? Will 
he dance ? Oho ! King Solomon for- 
ever.” And then he burst into such 
a fit of wheezing laughter that Mrs. 
Gnawbit had to come and pat him on 
the back and bring him cordials ; and 
my Master, looking very discomposed, 
sternly bade me betake myself to the 
schoolroom. 

After that, the Old Gentleman never 
saw me without shaking his crutch 
and asking me if I liked it, if I could 
bear it, and if Gnawbit made my flesh 
quiver. Of a truth he did. 

Why should I record the sickening 
experience of six months’ daily suffer- 
ing. That I was beaten every day 
was to be expected in an Age when 
blows and stripes were the only means 
thought of for instilling knowledge into 
the minds of youth. But I was alone, 
I was friendless, I was poor. My 
master received, I have reason to be- 
lieve, but a slender Stipend with me, 
and he balanced accounts by using me 
with greater barbarity than he em- 
ployed towards his better paying scho- 
lars. I had no Surname, I was only 
“Boy Jack;” and my schoolfellows 
put me down, I fancy, as some base- 
born child, and accordingly despised 
me. I had no pocket-money ✓ I was 
not allowed to share in the school- 
games. I was bidden to stand aside 
when a cake was to be cut up. God 
help me ! I was the most forlorn of 


The Strange Adventures 

s 

little children. Mrs. Gnawbit was as 
kind to me as she dared be, but she 
never showed me the slightest favor 
without its bringing me (if her hus- 
band came to hear of it) an addition- 
ally cruel Punishment. 

There was a Pond behind the orchard 
called Tibb’s hole, because, as our 
schoolboy legend ran, a boy called 
Tibb had once cast himself thereinto, 
and was drowned, through dread of 
being tortured by this Monster. I 
grew to be very fond of standing alone 
by the bank of this Pond, and of look- 
ing at my pale face in its cool blue- 
black depth. It seemed to me that 
the Pond was my friend, and that 
within its bosom I should find rest. 

I was musing in this manner by 
the bank one day when I felt myself 
touched on the shoulder. It was the 
crutch of the Old Gentleman, who had 
been wheeled hither, as was his cus- 
tom, by one of the boys. 

“You go into the orchard and steal 
a juicy pear,” said the Old Gentleman 
to his attendant. “ Gnawbit’s out, 
and I won’t tell him. Leave me with 
Boy Jack for five minutes, and then 
come back. — Boy Jack,” he continued, 
when we were alone, “ how do you 
like it?” 

“ Like what, sir ? ” I asked humbly. 

“ All of it, to be sure : — the birch, 
the cane, the thong, the ferula, the 
rope’s-end, — all Gnawbit’s little toys ? ” 

I told him, weeping, that I was 
very, very unhappy, and that I would 
like to drown myself. 

“ That’s wrong, that’s wicked, ” 
observed the Old Gentleman with a 
chuckle ; “ you mustn’t drown your- 
self, because then you’d lose your 
chance of being hanged. Gregory has 
as much right to live as other folks.” 

I did not in the least understand 
what he meant, but went on sobbing. 

“ I tell you what it is, ” pursued 
the Old Gentleman : “ you mustn’t stop 
here, because Gnawbit will skin you 
alive if* you do. He’s bound to do it ; 
he’s sworn to do it. He half-skinned 
Tibb ; and was going to take off the 
other half, when Tibb drowned him- 


of Captain Dangerous . 

self like a fool in this hole here. He 
was a fool, and should have followed 
my advice and run away. ‘ Tibb,’ I 
said, ‘you’ll be skinned. Bear it, 
but run away. Here’s a guinea. 
Run ! 1 He was afraid that Gnawbit 
would catch him ; and where is he 
now? Skinned, and drowned into 
the bargain. Don’t you be a Fool. 
You Run while there’s some skin left. 
Gnawbit’s sworn to have it all, if you 
don’t. Here’s a guinea, and run away 
as fast as ever your legs can carry you.” 

He gave me a bright piece of gold 
and waved me off, as though I were 
to run away that very moment. I sub- 
missively said that I would run away 
after school was over, but asked him 
where I should run to. 

“ I’m sure I don’t know, ” the Old 
Gentleman said somewhat peevishly. 
“ That’s not my business. A boy 
that has got legs with skin on’em, and 
doesn’t know where to run to, is a 
Jackass. — Stop ! ” he continued, as if 
a bright idea had just struck him ; 
“ did you ever hear of the Blacks ? ” 
“No, sir,” I answered. 

“ Stupid oaf ! Do you know where 
Charlwood Chase is ? ” 

“Yes, sir; my schoolfellows have 
been nutting there, and I have heard 
them speak of it. ” 

“ Then you make the best of your 
way to Charlwood Chase, and go a- 
nutting there till you find the Blacks ; 
you can’t miss them ; they’re every- 
where. Run, you little Imp. See ! 
the time’s up, and here comes the boy 
who stole the juicy pear. ” And the 
boy coming up, munching the remains 
of one of Gnawbit’s juciest pears, my 
patron was wheeled away, and I have 
never seen him from that day to this. 

That very night I ran away from 
Gnawbit’s, and made my way towards 
Charlwood Chase to join the “Blacks,” 
although Avho those “Blacks” were, 
and whereabouts in the Chase they 
lived, and what they did when they 
were there, I had no more definite 
idea than who the Emperor Prester 
John or the Man in the Moon might be. 

38 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


Chapter the Sixth. 

THE HISTORY OF MY GRANDFATHER, 

WHO WAS SO LONG KEPT A PRIS- 
ONER IN ONE OF THE KING’S CASTLES 

IN THE EAST COUNTRY. 

At the time when his Majesty 
Charles II. was so happily restored to 
the throne of these kingdoms, there 
was, and had been, confined for up- 
wards of ten years, in one of his Maj- 
esty’s Castles in the eastern part of 
this kingdom, a certain Prisoner. 
His Name was known to none, not 
even to the guards who kept watch 
over him, so to speak, night and day, 
— not even to the gaoler, who had 
been told that he must answer with 
his Head for his safe custody, who had 
him always in a spying, fretful over- 
looking, and who slept every night 
with the keys of the Captive’s cell un- 
der his pillow. The Castle where he 
lay in hold has been long since lev- 
elled to the earth, if, indeed, it ever 
had any earth to rest upon, and was 
not rather stayed upon some jutting 
fragment of Rock washed away at last 
by the ever-encroaching sea. Nay, 
of its exact situation I am not quali- 
fied to tell. I never saw the place, 
and my knowledge of it is confined to 
a bald hearsay, albeit of the Deeds 
that were done within its walls I can 
affirm the certitude with Truth. 
From such shadowy accounts as I 
have collected, the edifice would seem 
to have consisted but of a single tower 
or donjon-keep very strong and thick, 
and defying the lashings of the waves, 
almost as though it were some Pharos 
or other guide to mariners. It was 
surrounded by a low stone wall of pro- 
digious weight of masonry, and was 
approached from the mainland by a 
drawbridge and barbican. But for 


many months of the year there was 
no mainland within half a mile of it, 
and the King’s Castle could only be 
reached by boats. Men said that the 
Sun never shone there but for ten min- 
utes before and ten minutes after a 
storm, and there were almost always 
storms lowering over or departing 
from that dismal place. The Castle 
was at least two miles from any human 
habitation ; for the few fishermen’s 
cabins, made of rotten boats, hogs- 
heads nailed together, and the like, 
which had pitifully nestled under the 
lee of the Castle in old time, had been 
rigorously demolished to their last 
crazy timber when the Prisoner was 
brought there. At a respectful dis- 
tance only, far in, and yet but a damp 
little islet in the midst of the fens, was 
permitted to linger on, in despised ob- 
scurity, a poor swamp of some twenty 
houses that might, half in derision and 
half in civility, be called a Village. 
It had a church without a steeple, but 
with a poor Stump like the blunted 
wreck of some tall ship’s mainmast. 
The priest’s wages were less than 
those of a London coal-porter. The 
poor man could get no tithes, for there 
were no tithes to give him. Three 
parts of his glebe were always under 
water, and he was forced to keep a 
little school for his maintenance, of 
which the scholars could pay him but 
scant fees, seeing that it was always a 
chance whether their parents were 
dead of the Ague, or Drowned. Yet 
there was a tavern in the village, 
where these poor, shrinking, feverish 
creatures met and drank and smoked 
and sang their songs, contriving now 
and again to smuggle a few kegs of 
spirits from Holland, and baffle the 
riding-officers in a scamper through 
the fens. They were a simple folk, 
39 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


fond of telling Ghost-Stories, and with 
a firm belief in charms to cure them 
from the Ague. And, with an awe 
whose intensity was renewed each 
time the tale was told, they whispered 
among themselves as lo that Prisoner 
of Fate up at the Castle yonder. 
What this man’s Crime had been, 
none could tell. His misdeed was 
not, it was whispered, stated in the 
King’s Warrant. The Governor was 
simply told to receive a certain Pris- 
oner, who would be delivered to him 
by a certain Officer, and that, at the 
peril of his life, he was to answer for 
his safe custody. The Governor, 
whose name was Ferdinando Glover, 
had been a Captain of Horse in the 
late Protector Oliver’s time; but, to 
the surprise of all men, he was not 
dismissed at his Majesty’s Restoration, 
but was continued in his command, 
and, indeed, received preferment, hav- 
ing the grade of a Colonel on the Irish 
establishment. But they did not fail 
to tell him, and with fresh instances 
of his severity, that he would answer 
with his head for the safe keeping of 
his Prisoner. 

Of this strange Person it behoves 
me now to speak. In the year 1660, 
he appeared to be about seven-and- 
thirty years of age, tall, shapely, well- 
knit in his limbs, which captivity had 
rather tended to make full of flesh 
than to waste away ; for there were 
no yards nor spacious outlying walls 
to this Castle ; and, but for a narrow 
ledge that ran along the surrounding 
border, and where he was but rarely 
suffered to walk, there were no means 
for him to take any exercise whatever. 
He wore his own hair in full, dark 
locks, which Time and Sorrow had 
alike agreed to grizzle. Strong lines 
marked his face, but age had not 
brought them there. His eye was 
dim, but more with watching and 
study than with the natural failing of 
vital forces. 

So he had been in this grim place 
going on for twelve years, without a 
day’s respite, without an hour’s en- 
largement. True, he wore no fetters, 

40 


and was treated with a grave and 
stately Consideration; but his bonds 
were not less galling, and the iron 
had not the less entered into his soul. 
The Order was, that he was to be 
held as a Gentleman, and to be sub- 
jected to no grovelling indignities or 
base usage. But the Order was (for 
a long time, and until another Pris- 
oner, hereafter to be named, received 
a meed of Enlargement) likewise as 
strict that, save his keepers, he should 
see no living soul. “And it is use- 
less,” wrote a Great Lord to the Gov- 
ernor once, when it was humbly sub- 
mitted to him that the Prisoner might 
need spiritual consolation, and have 
solace to his soul by conferring with 
poor Parson Webfoot yonder, — “it 
is useless,” said that nobleman, “for 
your charge to see any black gown, 
under pretext that he would Repent ; 
for, albeit, though I know not his 
crime more than the babe unborn, I 
have it from his Majesty’s own gra- 
cious word of mouth, that what he 
has done cannot be repented of ; 
therefore you are again commanded 
to keep him close, and to let him 
have speech neither of parson nor of 
peasant.” Which was duly done. 
But Colonel Glover, not untouched by 
that curiosity inherent to mankind, as 
well as womankind, took pains to 
cast about whether this was not one 
who had a hand in compassing the 
death of King Charles I. ; and this 
coming, in some strange manner 
(through inquiries he had made in 
London), to the ears of Authority, he 
was distinctly told that his prisoner 
was not one of those bold bad men 
who, misled by Oliver Cromwell, had 
signed that fatal Warrant: the names 
and doom of the Regicides being now 
all well known, as having suffered or 
fled from Justice, or being in hold, as 
Mr. Martyn was. So Colonel Glover, 
being well assured that what was 
done was for the King’s honor, and 
for the well-being of his Estates, and 
that any other further searching or 
prying might cost him his place, if 
they did not draw him within the 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


meshes of the law against Misprision 
of Treason, forbore to vex himself or 
Authority further on matters that con- 
cerned him not, and was so content to 
guard his Prisoner with greater care 
than ever. The Castle was garrisoned 
by but twelve men, and of these six 
were invalids and matrosses ; but the 
other six were tall and sturdy veter- 
ans, who had been indeed of Oliver’s 
Life-guard, and were now confirmed 
in their places, and with the pay, not 
of common soldiers, but of private 
gentlemen, by the King’s own order. 
Their life was dreary enough, for they 
could hold but little comradeship with 
the invalids, whom they dubbed 
“gray beards, drivellers, and kill- 
joys.” But they had a guard-room 
to themselves, where they diced and 
drank, and told their ruffian stories, 
and sang their knavish catches, as is 
the manner, I suppose, for all soldiers 
to do in all countries, whether in 
camps or in cities. But their duty 
w«ts withal of the severest. The in- 
valids went snugly to bed at nine of 
the clock, or thereabouts, but the 
veritable men of war kept watch and 
ward all night, turn and turn about, 
and even when they slept took their 
repose on a bench, which was placed 

ri«rht across the Prisoner’s door. 

© # 

This much-enduring man — for 

surely no lot could be harder than 
his — to be thus, and in the very prime 
and vigor of manhood, cooped up in 
a worse than gaol, wherein for a long 
time he was even denied the company 
of captives as wretched as he, — this 
slave to some Mightier Will and 
Sterner Fate than, it would seem, 
mortal knowledge could wot of, bore 
his great Distress with an unvarying 
meekness and calm dignity. With 
him, indeed, they did as they listed, 
using him as one that was as Clay in 
the hands of the Potter ; but, not to 
the extent of one tetchy word or fro- 
ward movement did he ever show 
that he thought his imprisonment un- 
just, or the bearing of those who 
were set over him cruel. And this 
was not an abject stupor or dull iudif- 

41 


ference, such as I have marked in 
rogues confined for life in the Bagnios 
of the Levant, who knew that they 
must needs pull so many strokes and 
get so many stripes every day, and so 
gave up battling with the World, and 
grinned contumely at their gaolers or 
the visitors who came sometimes to 
point at them and fling them copper 
money. In the King’s Prisoner there 
was a philosophic reserve and quiets 
ness that almost approached content ; 
and his resignation under suffering 
was of that kind that a Just Man 
may feel who knows that he is upon 
the ground, and that, howsoever his 
enemies push at him, he cannot fall 
far. He never sought to evade the 
conditions of his captivity or to plead 
for its being lightened. The courte- 
sies that were offered to him, in so 
far as the Governor was warranted 
in offering such civilities, he took as 
his due ; but he never craved a greater 
indulgence or went one step in word 
or in deed to obtain a surcease from 
his harsh and cruel lot. 

He would rise at six of the clock 
both in winter and summer, and 
apply himself with great ardor to his 
private devotions and to good studies 
until eight, when his breakfast, a 
tankard of furmety and a small mea- 
sure of wine, was brought him. And 
from nine until noon he would again 
be at his studies, and then have din- 
ner of such meats as were in season. 
From one to three he was privileged 
to walk either on the narrow strip of 
masonry that encompassed his prison- 
house, and with a soldier with his fire- 
lock f>n hip following his every 'Step, 
or else to wander up and down in the 
various chambers of the Castle, still 
followed by a guard. Now he would 
tarry awhile in the guard-room, and 
stand over against the soldier’s table, 
his head resting very sadly against 
the chimney, and listen to their wild 
talk, which was, howover, somewhat 
hushed and shaped to decency so long 
as he abided there. And anon ho 
he would come into the Governor » 
apartment and hold Colonel Glover 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


for some moments in grave discourse 
on matters of history, and the lives of 
Worthy Captains, and sometimes upon 
points and passages of Scripture, but 
never upon any thing that concerned 
the present day. For, beyond the 
bounds of the place in which he was 
immured, what should he know of 
things of instant moment, or of the 
way the world was wagging? By 
permission, the Colonel had told him 
that Oliver was no more, and that 
Richard, his son, was made Protector 
in his stead. Then, at the close of 
that weak and vain shadow of a Reign, 
and after the politic act of my Lord 
Duke of Albemarle (Gen. Monk), 
who made his own and the country’s 
fortune, and Nan Clarges’ to boot, at 
one stroke, the Prisoner was given to 
know that schism was at an end, and 
that the King had come to his own 
again. Colonel Glover must needs 
tell him ; for he was bidden to fire a 
salvo from the five pieces of artillery 
he had mounted, three on his outer 
wall, and two at the top of his donjon- 
keep, to say nothing of hoisting the 
Royal Standard, which now streamed 
from the pole where erst had floated 
the rag that bore the arms of the 
Commonwealth of England. 

“ I am glad,” the Prisoner said, 
when they told him. “ I hope this 
young man will make England hap- 
pier than did his father before him. ” 
But this was after he was in hopes of 
getting some company in his solitude, 
and when he was cheerfuller. 

It was about midway in his impris- 
onment when another Captive was 
brought to the King’s Castle ;*but it 
was not until close upon the Restora- 
tion of King Charles II. that the two 
prisoners were permitted to come to- 
gether. The second guest in this most 
dolorous place was a Woman, and that 
Woman was my Grandmother, Ara- 
bella Greenville. 

There is no use in disguising the 
fact that, for many months after the 
failure of her attack on the Protector, 
the poor Lady had been as entirely dis- 
traught as was her fate after the death 


of the Lord Francis, and that to write 
her Life during this period would be 
merely penning the chronicle of a con- 
tinued Frenzy. It were merciful to 
draw a veil over so sad and mortifying 
a scene — so well brought up as she 
had been, and respected by all the 
Quality, — but in pursuit of the deter- 
mination with which I set out, to tell 
the Truth, and all the Truth, I am 
forced to confess that my Grand- 
mother’s Ravings were of the most 
violent, and that of her throughly de- 
mented state there could be no doubt. 
So far, indeed, did the unhappy crea- 
ture’s Abandonment extend, that those 
who were about her could with diffi- 
culty persuade her to keep any Gar- 
ments upon her body, and were forced 
with Stripes and Revilings to force to 
a decorous carriage the gentle Lady 
who had once been the very soul and 
mirror of Modesty. But in process of 
time these dreadful furies and rages 
left her, and she became calm. She 
was still beautiful, albeit her comeliness 
was now of a chastened and saddened 
order, and, save her eye, there was no 
light or sparkle in her face. 

When her health and mind were 
healed, so far as earthly skill could 
heal them, — it being given out, I am 
told, to her kindred that she had died 
mad in the Spinning House at Cam- 
bridge : but she had never been fur- 
ther than the house of one Dr. Empson 
at Colchester, who had tended her 
during her distraction, — my Grand- 
mother was brought to the King’s 
Castle in the East, and for a long time 
lay incarcerate in a lower chamber 
of the keep, being not allowed even 
that scant exercise which was permitted 
to the Prisoner above, and being 
waited upon and watched night and 
day by the Governor’s Daughter, Mis- 
tress Ruth Glover, who at night slept 
in a little closet adjoining my Grand- 
mother’s chamber. The girl had a 
tongue, I suppose like the rest of her 
sex, — and of our sex too, brother, — . 
and she would not have been eighteen, 
of a lively Disposition, and continually 
in the society of a Lady of Birth and 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


accomplishments, now more then ten 
years her senior, without gossiping to 
her concerning all that she knew of 
the sorry little world round about her. 
It was not, however, much, or of any 
great moment, that Ruth had to tell 
my Grandmother. She could but hold 
her in discourse of how the Invalid 
Matrosses had the rheumatism and 
the ague ; how the Life-guard men in 
their room diced and drank and quar- 
relled, both over their dice and their 
drink ; how the rumor ran that the 
poverty-stricken habitants of the ad- 
joining village had, from long dwelling 
among the fens, become as web-footed 
as the wild-fowl they hunted ; and how 
her Father, who had been for many 
years a widower, was harsh and stern 
with her, and would not suffer her to 
read the romances and playbooks, 
some half dozen of which the Ser- 
geant of the Guard had with him. 
She may have had a little also to say 
about the Prisoner in the upper story 
of the Keep — how his chamber was 
all filled with folios and papers ; how 
he studied and wrote and prayed ; and 
during his two hours’ daily liberty 
wandered sadly and in a silent man- 
ner about the Castle. For this was 
all Mistress Ruth had to tell, and of 
the Prisoner’s name, or of his Crime, 
she was, perforce, mum. 

These two Women nevertheless 
shaped all kinds of feverish Roman- 
ces and wild conjectures respecting 
this unknown man above stairs. Ar- 
abella had told her own sad story to 
the girl who — though little better than 
a waiting-woman — she had made, for 
want of a better bower-maiden, her 
Confidante. I need not say that oceans 
of Sympathy, or the accepted Tokens 
thereof, I mean Tears, ran out from 
the eyes of the Governor’s Daughter 
when she heard the History of the 
Lord Francis, of the words he spoke 
just before the musketeers fired their 
pieces at him, and of another nobl£ 
speech he made two hours before he 
Suffered, when the Officer in com- 
mand, compassioning his youth and 
parts, told him that if he had any suit, 


short of life, to prefer to the Lord 
General, he would take upon himself 
to say that it should be granted with- 
out question ; whereon quoth my Lord 
Francis, u I will not die with any suit 
in my mouth, save to the King of 
kings.” On this, and on the story of 
the Locket, and of his first becoming 
acquainted with Arabella, of his 
sprightly disguise as a Teacher, with 
the young squire at Madam Desagui- 
lier’s school at Hackney, of his Beau- 
ty and Virtues and fine manners and 
extraordinary proficiency in Arts and 
Letters and the Exercises of Chivalry, 
— of these and a thousand kindred 
things the two women were never 
tired of talking. And, indeed, if one 
calls to mind what vast Eloquence 
and wealth of words two loving hearts 
can distil from a Bit of Ribbon or a 
Torn Letter, it is not to be wondered 
at that Arabella and Ruth should find 
their Theme inexhaustible — so good 
and brave as had been its Object, now 
dead and cold in the bloody trench at 
Hampton yonder, and convert it into 
a perpetually welling spring of Mourn- 
ful Remembrances. 

Arabella had taken to her old trick 
of Painting again, and in the first and 
second year of her removal to the Cas- 
tle executed some very creditable per- 
formances. But she never attempted 
either the effigies of her Lover or of 
the Protector, and confined herself to 
portraitures of the late martyred King, 
and of the Princes now unjustly kept 
from their inheritance. 

It was during the Protectorate of 
Richard Cromwell (that mere puppet- 
play of Power) that the watch kept 
on the prisoners in the King’s Castle 
grew for a time much less severe and 
even lax. Arabella was suffered to 
go' out of her chamber, even at the 
very hours that the Prisoner above was 
was wandering to and fro. The guards 
did not hinder their meeting; and, 
says Colonel Ferdinando Glover, one 
day to his daughter, “ I should not 
wonder if, some of these days, Orders 
were to come down for me to set both 
my birds free from their cage. That 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


which Mrs. Greenville has done, you 
and I know full well, and I am almost 
sorry that she did not succeed.” 

“ Oh, Father ! ” cries Mistress Ruth, 
who was of a very soft and tender na- 
ture, and abhorred the very idea of 
bloodshed ; so that, loving Arabella 
as she did with all her heart, she could 
not help regarding her with a kind of 
Terror when she remembered the 
deed for which she was confined. 

“ Tush, girl, ” the Colonel makes 
answer, “ ’tis no Treason now to name 
such a thing. Oliver’s dead, and will 
eat no more bread ; and I misliked 
him much at the end, for it is certain 
that he betrayed the Good Old Cause, 
and hankered after an earthly crown. 
As for this young Popinjay, he will 
have more need to protect himself 
than these Kingdoms. And I think 
that if your father is to live on the 
King’s wages, it had better be on the 
real King’s than the false one.” 

“ And do you think, father, that 
King Charles will come to his own 
again ? ” asks Ruth, in a flutter of de- 
light ; for Arabella had made her a 
very Royalist at heart. 

u I think what I think, ” replies the 
Colonel, with his stern look ; “ but 
whatever happens, it is not likely, it 
seems me, that we shall have our 
prisoners here much longer. That is 
to say : — Mrs. Greenville, for what 
she hath done can scarcely be distaste- 
ful to those who loved not Oliver. 
But for my other bird, — who can tell? 
He may have raised the very Devil 
for aught I know.” 

“ Do you think that he also tried 
to kill the Protector?” Ruth asks 
timidly, and just hazarding a Surmise 
that had oft been mooted betwixt Ara- 
bella and herself. 

“Get thee to thy chamber, and 
about thy business, wench, ” the 
Colonel says, quite storming. u Away, 
or I will lay my willow wand about thy 
shoulders. Is there nothing but kill- 
ing of Protectors, forsooth, for thy 
silly head to be filled with ? ” And 
yet I incline to think that Mr. Gov- 
ernor was not of a very different mind 


to his daughter ; for away he hies to 
his chamber, and falls to reading 
Colonel Titus’ famous book, Killing 
no Murder , and, looking anon on his 
Prisoner coming wandering down a 
winding staircase, says softly to him- 
self, “ He looks like one, for all his 
studious guise, who could do a Bold 
Deed at a pinch.” 

This Person, I should have said, 
wore, winter and summer, a plain, 
black shag gown untrimmed, with 
camlet netherstocks, and a smooth 
band. And his Right Hand was 
always covered with a glove of Black 
Velvet. 

By and by came, as I have related, 
the news of his Majesty’s Restoration 
and fresh Strict Orders for the keep- 
ing of the Prisoner. But though he 
was not to see a clergyman, — and for 
all that prohibition he saw more than 
one before he came out of Captivity, 
— a certain Indulgence was noAV 
granted him. He was permitted to 
have free access to Mrs. Arabella 
Greenville, and to converse freely 
with her at all proper times and seasons. 

But that I know the very noble na- 
ture of my Grandmother, and am 
prepared, old as I am, to defend her 
fame even to taking the heart’s blood 
of the villain that maligned her, I 
might blush at having to record a fact 
which must needs be set down here. 
Ere six months had passed, there 
grew up between Mrs. Greenville and 
the Prisoner a very warm and close 
friendship, which in time ripened into 
the tenderest of attachments. That 
her love for her dead Frank ever wa- 
vered, or that she ever swerved for 
one moment in her reverence for his 
memory, I cannot and I will not be- 
lieve; but she nevertheless looked 
with an exceeding favor upon the im- 
prisoned man, and made no scruple 
of avowing her Flame to Ruth. This 
young person did in time confide the 
same to her father, who was much 
concerned thereat, he not knowing 
how far the allowance of any love- 
passages between two such strangely 
assorted suitors might tally with his 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


duty towards the King and Govern- 
ment. Nor could he shut his eyes to 
the fact that the Prisoner regarded 
Mrs. Greenville first with a tender 
compassion (such as a father might 
have towards his child), next with an 
ardent sympathy, and finally — and 
that very speedily too — with a Feeling 
that had all the Signs and Portents of 
Love. These two unfortunate People 
were so shut out from the world, and 
so spiritually wedded by a common 
Misery and discomfort, that their 
mere earthly coming together could 
not be looked upon but as natural and 
reasonable; for Mrs. Greenville was 
the only woman upon whom the Pris- 
oner could be expected to look, — he 
being, beyond doubt, one of Gentle 
Degree, if not of Great and Noble 
Station, and therefore beyond aught 
but the caresses of a Patron with such 
a simple maid as Ruth Glover, whose 
father, although of some military rank, 
was, like most of the Captains who 
had served under the Commonwealth 
(witness Ireton, Harrison, Hacker, 
and many more), of exceeding mean 
extraction. 

That love-vows were interchanged 
between this Bride and Bridegroom of 
Sorrow and a Dark Dungeon almost, 
I know not ; but their liking for each 
other’s society — he imparting to her 
some of his studies, and she playing 
music, with implements of which she 
was well provided, to him of an after- 
noon — had become so apparent both 
to the soldiers on guard and servants, 
even to the poor Invalid Matrosses 
wheezing and shivering in their buff- 
coats, that Colonel Glover, in a very 
flurry of uncertainty, sent post haste 
to Whitehall to know what he was to 
do — whether to chamber up Mrs. 
Greenville in her chamber, as of afore- 
time, or confine the Prisoner in one of 
the lower vaults in the body of the 
rock, with so many pounds-weight of 
iron on his legs. For Colonel Glover 
was a man accustomed to use strong 
measures, whether with his family or 
with those he had custody over. 

No answer came for many days ; 


and the Governor had almost begun 
to think his message to be forgotten, 
when one summer evening (a. d. 
1661 ) a troop of horse were seen gal- 
loping from the Village towards the 
Castle. The Drawbridge, which was 
on the ordinary kept slung, was now 
lowered ; and the captain of the troop 
passing up to the barbican, gave Col- 
onel Glover a sealed packet, and told 
him that he and his men would bivack 
at the bridge-foot (for the fens were 
passable at this season) until one who 
was expected at nightfall should come. 
Meat and drink were sent for, and the 
soldiers, dismounting, began to take 
tobacco and rail against the Castle in 
their brutal fashion — shame on them ! 
— as an old mangy rat-trap. 

Colonel Glover went up into his 
chamber in extreme disturbance. He 
had opened the packet and conned its 
contents ; and having his daughter to 
him presently, and charging her, by 
her filial duty, to use discretion in all 
things that he should confide to her, 
tells her that his Majesty the King of 
England, France, and Ireland was 
coming to the Castle in a strictly Dis- 
guised habit that very evening. 

There was barely time to make the 
slightest of preparations for this Glori- 
ous Guest ; but what there was, and of 
the best of Meat, and Wine, and Plate, 
and hangings, and candles in sconces, 
was set out in the Governor’s cham- 
ber, and ordered as handsomely as 
might be for his Majesty’s coming. 
About eight o’clock — the villagers be- 
ing given to understand that only some 
noble commander is coming to pass 
the soldiers in the Castle in review — 
arrived two lackeys, with panniers 
and saddle-bags, and a French varlet, 
who said he was, forsooth, a cook, 
and carried about with him a whole 
elaboratory of stove-furnaces, pots and 
pans, and jars of sauces and condi- 
ments. Monsieur was quickly at 
work in the kitchen, turning all things 
topsy-turvy, and nearly frightening 
Majrgery, the old cook, who had been 
a baggage-wagon sutler at Naseby in 
the Great Wars, into fits. About 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


lialf-past ten a trumpet was heard to 
wind at the bridge-foot, and a couple 
of horses came tramping over the 
planks, making the chains rattle even 
to the barbican, where their riders 
dismounted. 

The King, for it is useless to make 
any further disguise about him — al- 
though the Governor deferred falling 
on his knees and kissing his hand until 
he had conducted him to his own 
chamber — was habited in strict incog- 
nito, with an uncurled wig, a flap-hat, 
and a horseman’s coat over all. He 
had not so much as a hanger by his 
side, carrying only a stout oak walk- 
ing-staflf. With him came a great 
lord, of an impudent countenance, and 
with a rich dress beneath his cloak, 
who, when his Master was out of the 
room, sometimes joked with, and 
sometimes swore at, poor little Ruth, 
as, I grieve to say, was the uncivil 
custom among the Quality in those 
wild days. The King supped very 
copiously, drinking many beakers of 
wine, and singing French songs, to 
which the impudent Lord beat time, 
and sometimes presumed to join in 
chorus. But this* Prince was ever of 
an easy manner and affable complex- 
ion, which so well explains the Love 
his people bore him. All this while 
the Governor and Ruth waited at 
table, serving the dishes and wine on 
their knees ; for they would suffer no 
mean hirelings to wait upon their 
guests. 

As the King drank — and he was a 
great taker of wine — lie asked a mul- 
titude of questions concerning the 
Prisoner and Mrs. Greenville, to all 
of which Colonel Glover made answer 
in as plain a manner as was consistent 
with his deep loyalty and reverence. 
Soon, however, Colonel Glover found 
that his Majesty was paying far more 
attention to the bottle than to his con- 
versation, and, about one in the morn- 
ing, was conducted, with much rever- 
ence, to the Governor’s own sleeping- 
chamber, which had been hastily 
prepared. His Majesty was quite 
Affable, but Haggard visibly. The 


impudent Lord was bestowed in the 
chamber which had been Ruth’s, be- 
fore she came to sleep so near Mrs. 
Greenville ; and it is well he knew not 
what a pretty tenant the room had had, 
else would he have doubtless passed 
some villanous pleasantries thereupon. 

The King, who was always an early 
riser, was up betimes in the morning ; 
and on Colonel Glover representing to 
him his sorrow for the mean manner 
in which he had of necessity been 
lodged, answered airily that he was 
better off there than in the Oak, or in 
Holland, without a stiver in his 
pocket ; “ Although, oddsfish ! ” quoth 
his Majesty, “this Castle of mine 
seems fitter to harbor wild-ducks than 
Christians.” And then nothing would 
suit his Majesty but to be introduced 
to Mrs. Greenville, with whom he 
was closeted two whole hours. 

He came forth from her chamber 
with his dark, saturnine face all 
flushed. “ A brave woman ! — a bold 
woman ! ” he kept saying. “ An aw- 
ful service she was like to have done 
me ; and all to think that it was for 
love of poor Frank.” For this Prince 
had known the Lord Francis well, 
and had shown him many favors. 

“ And now, good Master Governor,” 
the King continued, but with quite an- 
other expression on his countenance, 
“ we will see your Man Captive, if it 
shall so please you.” And the two 
went up-stairs. 

This is all I am permitted to tell in 
this place of what passed between 
King Charles the Second and the 
Prisoner in the upper chamber : — 

“You know me!” the King said, 
sitting over against him at the table, 
and scanning his face with dark ear- 
nestness. 

“You are Charles Stuart, second 
of the name on the throne of England.” 

“You know I am in the possession 
of your secret — of the King’s Secret ; 
for of those dead it was known but to 
Oliver, as of those living it is now 
only known to yourself and to me.” 

“And the young Man, Richard?” 
“He never knew it. His father 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


never trusted him so far. He had 
doubts and suspicions, that was all.” 
“Thank God!” said the prisoner. 

“ What was Oliver’s enmity to- 
wards you, that he should immure 
you here all these years?” 

“I had served him too well. He 
feared lest the Shedder of Blood should 
become the Avenger of Blood.” 

“ Are you sorry ? ” 

“ Sorry ! ” cried the Prisoner, with 
a kind of scream. “Had he a thou- 
sand lives, had I a thousand hands, I 
would do the same deed to-morrow.” 
And he struck the right hand that was 
covered with the velvet glove with 
cruel violence on to the oaken table. 

Chapter the Seventh. 

I AM BRED UP IN VERY BAD COMPANY, 
AND (TO MY SHAME) HELP TO KILL 
THE KING’S DEER. 

I lay all that night in a little Hole 
by the side of a Bank, just as though 
I had been a Fox-cub. I was not in 
much better case than that Vermin, 
and I only marvel that my School- 
master did not come out next day to 
Hunt me with horses and hounds. 
Hounds! — the Black Fever to him! 
— he had used me like a Hound any 
time for Six Months past ; and often 
had I given tongue under his Double 
Thonging. Happily the weather was 
warm, and I got no hurt by sleeping 
in the Hole. ’Tis strange, too, what 
Hardships and Hazards of Climate 
and Excess we can bear in our Youth, 
whereas in middle life an extra Slice 
gives us a Surfeit, and another cup 
turns our Liver to Touchwood ; whilst 
in age (as I know to my sorrow) we 
dare scarcely venture our shoe in a Pud- 
dle for fear of the Chills and Sciatica. 
In the morning I laved my face in a 
Brook that hurtled hard by ; but wait- 
ed very fearfully until Noon ere I 
dared venture forth from my cov- 
ert. I had filled my pockets with 
Fruit and Bread (which I am afraid 
I did not come very honestly by, and 
indeed admit that Gnawbit’s Larder 
and Orchard found me in Provender) , 


and was so able to break my fast. 
And my Guinea, I remembered, was 
still unchanged. I had a dim kind of 
impression that I was bound to Chari- 
wood Chase, to join the Blacks, of 
whom the Old Gentleman had spoken , 
but I was not in any Hurry to get to my 
Goal. I was Free, albeit a Runaway, 
and felt all the delights of Indepen- 
dence. You whose pleasures lie in 
Bowers, and Beds, and Cards, and 
Wine, can little judge of the Ease felt 
by him who is indeed a Beggar and 
pursued, but is at Liberty. I remem- 
ber being in hiding once with a Gen- 
tleman Robber, who had by the aid 
of a File and a Friend, contrived to 
give the Galleys leg-bail, and who for 
days afterwards was never tired of 
patting and smoothing his ancles, and 
saying, “ ’Twas there the shackles 
galled me so.” Poor rogue ! he was 
soon afterwards laid by the heels and 
swung ; for there is no Neck Verse in 
France to save a Gentleman from the 
Gallows. 

Towards evening my gall began to 
grate somewhat with the sense of mine 
own utter loneliness ; and for a mo- 
ment I Wavered between the resolve 
to go Forward, and a slavish prompt- 
ing to return to my Tyrant, and suffer 
all the torments his cruelty could visit 
me with. Then, as a middle course, 
I thought I would creep back to my 
kennel and die there ; but I was hap- 
pily dissuaded from such a mean sur- 
render to Fortune’s Spites through the 
all-unknowing agency of a Bull, that, 
spying me from afar off where he was 
feeding, came thundering across two 
fields and through a shallow stream, 
routed me up from my refuge, and 
chased me into the open. I have oft- 
en since been thankful to this ungovern- 
able Beast (that would have Tossed, 
and perchance Gored me sorely, had 
he got at me), and seldom, in later 
life, when I have felt weak and waver- 
ing in the pursuit of a profitable pur- 
pose, have I failed to remember the 
Bull, and how he chased me out of 
Distempered Idleness into Activity. 
The Sun had begun to wclk in the 
47 


The Strange Adventures 

west by the time I had mustered up 
enough courage to come into the High 
Road, which I had an uncertain idea 
stretched away from Gnawbit’s house, 
and towards Reading. But suddenly 
recalling the Danger of travelling by 
the Highway, where I might be met 
by Horsemen or Laboring persons 
sent in quest of me, — for it did not 
enter my mind that I was too worth- 
less a scholar to be Pursued, aud that 
Guawbit was, ’tis likely enough, more 
Pleased than sorry to be Rid of me, 
— I branched off from the main to the 
left ; so walking, as it seemed to me, 
many miles. I grew grievously hun- 
gry. No more Bread or Apples re- 
mained in my pouch ; but I still had 
my Guinea, so I deemed, and resolved 
that if I came upon any House of 
Entertainment, I would sup. For in- 
deed, while all Nature round mo 
seemed to be taking some kind of 
Sustenance, it was hard that I, a 
Christian, should go to bed (or into 
another Fox-hole, for bed I had none, 
and yet had slept in my time in a 
grand chamber in Hanover Square) 
with an empty belly. The Earth 
was beginning to drink up the dews, 
like au insatiate toper as she is. I 
passed a flook of sheep biting their has- 
ty supper from the grass ; and each 
one with a little cloud of gnats buzz- 
ing around it, that with feeble stings, 
poor insects, were trying for their sup- 
per too. And ’tis effect we have upon 
one another. The birds had taken 
home their warm-cheer to the little 
ones in the nests, and were sinfrinjr 
their after-supper songs, very sweetly 
but drowsily. ’Twas too late in the 
year for the Nightingale, — that I 
knew, — but the jolly Blackbird was 
in full feather and voice ; and presently 
there swept by me a great Owl, going 
home to feast, I will be bound, in his 
hollow tree, and with nothing less than 
a Field Mouse for his supper, the ras- 
cal. ’Twas a wicked imagining, but 
I could not help thinkin'g, as I heard 
the birds carrolling so merrily, — and 
how they keep so plump upon so little 
to eat is always to me a marvel, until 


of Captain Dangerous . 

I remember with what loving care 
Heaven daily spreads their table from 
Nature’s infinite ordinary, — how 
choice a Refection a dish of birds’ 
eggs, so often idly stolen and blown 
hollow by us boys, would make. The 
feathered creatures are a forgiving 
folk ; and ’tis not unlikely that the 
Children in the Wood had often gone 
birds’-nesting : but when they were 
dead, the kindly Red Jerkins forgave 
all their little maraudings, and covered 
them with leaves, as though the chil- 
dren had strewn them crumbs or 
brought them worms from January to 
December. Gnawbit was a wretch 
who used to kill the Robins, and for 
that, if for naught else, he will surely^ 
howl. 

By and by, when darkness was 
coming down like a playhouse curtain, 
and the Northern waggoner up yon- 
der — how often have I watched him . 
at sea ! — was yoking his seven cart- 
mares to the steadfast star, I came 
upon a Man — the first I had seen since 
the Old Gentleman bade me begone 
with my Guinea, and join the Blacks. 
This Man was not walking or runn- 
ing, nay nor sitting nor lying as Lazars 
do in hedges. But he tumbled out of 
the quicket as it were, and came to 
me with short leaps, making as though 
he would devour me. We schoolboys 
had talked often enough about Claude 
Duval and the Golden Farmer, and I 
set this Dreadful Being down at once 
as a Highwayman ; so down I went 
Flump on my knees and Roared for 
mercy, as I was wont to do to Gnaw- , 
bit, till I learnt that no Roaring would 
make him desist from his brutish pur- 
pose. It was darkish now, and I well 
nigh fancied the Man was indeed my 
wicked Master, for he had an uplifted 
weapon in his hand ; but when he 
came nearer to me, I found that it was 
not a cane nor a thong, but a Great 
Flail, which he whirled over his head, I 
and then brought down on the grouud 
with a Thwack, making the Night 
Flies dance. 

“ You Imp of mischief,” said the 
man as he seized me by the collar 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


and shook me roughly, tl what are you 
doing here, spying on honest folks ? 
Speak, or I’ll brain you with this 
Flail” 

I thought it best to tell this terrible- 
man the Truth. 

“If you please, sir,” I answered, 
trembling, “ I’ve run away.” 

“ Iiun away from where, you egg?” 

“ From Gnawbit’s, sir.” 

“And who the pest is Gnawbit, you 
hempen babe ? ” 

“ My schoolmaster, sir.” 

“ Ha ! that’s good,” the Man re- 
plied, loosening his hold somewhat on 
my collar. “ And what did you run 
away for ? ” 

I told him in broken sentences my 
short Story — of my Sufferings at 
School, at least, but never saying a 
word about my being a little Gentle- 
man, and the son of a Lady of Quality 
in Hanover Square. 

“And where are you going?” the 
Man asked, when I had finished. 

I told him that I was on my way to 
Charlwood Chase to join the Blacks. 
And then he asked me whether I had 
any Money, whereto I answered that 
I had a Guinea ; and little doubting 
in my Quaking Heart but that he 
would presently Wrench it from me, 
if haply he were not minded to have 
Meal as well as Malt, and brain me 
as he had threatened. But he forbore 
to offer me violence, and, quite releas- 
ing his hold, said, — 

“ I suppose you’d like some sup- 
per?” 

I said that I had not broken my 
fast for many hours, and was dead a- 
hungered. 

“ And wouldn’t mind supping with 
the Blacks in Charlwood Chase, eh?” 
he continued. 

I rather gave him to understand 
that such was not only my Wish but 
my Ambition. 

“ Come along to the Blacks, then,” 
said the Man. “ I *m one of ’em.” 

He drew a Lantern from under his 
garments as he spoke, and letting out 
the Light from the slide, passed it 
over, and up and down, his Face and 


Figure. Then did I see with Horror 
and Amazement that both his Coun- 
tenance and his Raiment were all 
smirched and bewrayed with dabs 
and patches of what seemed soot or 
blackened grease. It was a onoe white 
Smock or Gaberdine that made the 
chief part of his apparel ; and this, 
with the black patches on it, gave him 
a Pied appearance fearful to behold. 
There was on his head what looked 
like a great bundle of black rags ; and 
tufts of hair that might have been 
pulled out of the mane of a wild horse 
grew out from either side of his face, 
and wreathed its lower half. 

“ Come along,” repeated the Man ; 
“we’ll blacken you bravely in time, 
my Chicken-skin.” 

And so he grasped my hand in his, 
— and when I came to look at it after- 
wards, I found it smeared with sable, 
and with great black finger-marks upon 
it, — and led me away. We journeyed 
on in the Dark — for he had put up his 
Lantern — for another good half hour, 
he singing to himself from time to 
time some hoarse catches of song hav- 
ing reference to some “ Billy Boys,” 
that I conjectured were his compan- 
ions. And so we struck from by-lane 
into by-lane, and presently into a Plan- 
tation, and then through a gap in a 
Hedge, and through a Ditch full of 
Brambles, which galled my legs sorely. 
I was half asleep by this time, and 
was only brought to full wakefulness 
by the deep baying as of a Dog some 
few yards, as it seemed, from us. 

The Lantern’s light gleamed forth 
again ; and in the circle of Clear it 
made I could see we were surrounded 
by tall Trees that with their long 
crooked Arms looked as though they 
would entwine me in deadly embraces. 

“ Hist ! ” the man said very low. 
“That’s surely Black Towzer’s tongue.” 
And to my huge dismay he set up a 
sad responsive Howl, very like unto 
that of a Dog, but not at all akin to 
the voice of a Man. 

The answer to this was a whistle, 
and human speech, saying, — 

“ Black Jowler ! ” 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


“ Black Towzer, for a spade Gui- 
nea ! ” my companion made answer ; 
and in another moment there came 
bounding towards us another fellow in 
the same blackened masquerade as 
he, and with another Lantern. He 
had with him, besides, a shaggy hound 
that smelt me suspiciously and prowled 
round me, growling low, I shivering 
the whiles. 

“ What have we here ? ” asked the 
second Black ; for I made no doubt 
now but that my Company were of 
that Confederacy. 

“ Kid loose,” replied he who was to 
take me to supper. “ Given the keep- 
ers the slip, and run down by Billy 
Boys’ park. Aha ! ” and he whispered 
his comrade ruffian. 

Out went the Lanterns again, and 
he who answered to the name of Jow- 
ler tightened his grasp, and bade me 
for a young Tyburn Token quicken 
my pace. So we walked and walked 
again, poor I as sore as a pilgrim 
tramping up the Hill to Louth — which 
I have many times seen in those parts 
— with Shards in his shoes. Then it 
must come, forsooth, to more whist- 
ling ; and the same Play being over, 
we had one more Lantern to our Band, 
and one more Scurvy Companion as 
Black as a Flag, who in their kennel 
tongue was Mungo. And by and by 
we were joined by Surly, and Black 
Tom, and Grumps ; and so with these 
five Men, who were pleased to be 
called as the Beasts are, I stumbled 
along, tired, and drowsy, and famish- 
ing, and thinking my journey would 
never come to an end. 

Surely it must have been long past 
midnight when we made a halt ; and 
all the five lanterns being lit, and 
making so many dancing wheels of 
yellow, I found that we were still en- 
circled by those tall trees with the 
twining arms. And Jowler — for it is 
useless to speak of my conductor ac- 
cording to Human Rule — gave me a 
rough pat on the shoulder, and bade 
me cheer up, for that I should have my 
supper very soon now. All five then 
joined in a whistle so sharp, so clear, 


and so well sustained, that it sounded 
well-nigh melodious ; and to this there 
came, after the lapse of a few seconds, 
the noise as of a little peevish Terrier 
barking. 

“ True as Touchwood,” cried Black 
Jowler. “ In, Billy Boys, and hey 
for fat and flagons.” 

With this he takes me by the shoul- 
ders, telling me to fear naught, and 
spend my money like a gentleman, 
and bundles me before him till we 
came to something hard, as board. 
This I presently found was a door ; 
and in an instant I was in the midst 
of a kind of Tavern parlor, all lighted 
up with great candles stuck into lumps 
of clay, and face to face with the 
Fattest Woman I ever saw in my life. 

“Mother Moll Drum,” quoth my 
conductor, “ save you, and give me a 
quart of three threads, or I faint. 
Body o’ me, was ever green plover so 
pulled as I was.” 

The Fat Woman he called Mother 
Moll Drum was to all seeming in no 
very blessed temper ; for she bade 
Jowler go hang for a lean polecat, and 
be cursed meanwhile, and that she 
would draw him naught. 

“ Come, come, Mother,” Jowler 
said, making as though to appease 
her, “ what be these tantrums ? Come, 
draw ; for I’m as thirsty as an hour- 
glass, poor wretch, that has felt sand 
run through his gullet any time these 
twenty years.” 

“Draw for yourself, rogue,” says 
Mother Drum ; “ there’s naught I’ll 
serve you with, unless, indeed, I were 
bar-woman at St. Giles’s Pound, and 
had to froth you your last quart, as 
you went up the Heavy Hill to Ty- 
burn.” 

“We shall all go there in time — 
good time,” breaks in a deep solemn 
voice, drawn somehow through the 
nose, and coming from the Man-Dog 
they called Grumps ; “ meanwhile, O 
greasy woman, let the beverage our 
brother asked for be drawn, and I, 
even Grumps, will partake thereof, 
and ask a blessing,” 

“Woman yourself!” cries Moll 
50 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


Drum, in a rage. “ W oman yourself, 
and T — in your teeth, and woman 
to the mother that bore you, and sat 
in the stocks for Lightness ! Who 
are you, quotha, old reverend smock 
with the splay foot ? Come up, now, 
prithee, Bridewell Bird! You will 
drink, will you? I saw no dust or 
cobwebs come out of your mouth. Go 
hang, you moon-calf, false faucet, you 
roaring horse-courser, you ranger of 
Turnbull, you dull malt-house with a 
mouth of a peck and the sign of the 
swallow above.” 

By this time Mother Drum was 
well-nigh out of breath, and panted, 
and looked so hot, that they might 
have put her up by Temple Bar, on 
Queen Bess’s birthnight, for a Bonfire, 
and so saved Tar Barrels. And as 
she spoke she brandished a large Fry- 
ing Pan, from which great drops of 
hot grease — smelling very savory by 
the way — dropped on to the sanded 
floor. The other Blacks seemed in 
nowise disturbed by this Dispute, but 
were rather amused thereby, and 
gathered in a ring round Jowler and 
Grumps and the Fat Woman, laughing. 

“ Never mind, Mother Drum, ” 
quoth one ; “ she was a pig-woman 
once in Bartlemy Fair, and lost her 
temper through the heat of a coal-fire 
roasting porkers. Was’t not hot, 
Mother Drum ? was not Tophet a kind 
of cool cellar to it ? ” 

It was Surly who spoke, and Mother 
Drum turns on him in a rage. 

“ You lie, you pannierman’s by- 
blow!” she cried; u you bony muck- 
fowl, with the bony back sticking out 
like the ace of spades on the point of 
a small-sword ! you lie, Bobchin, 
Changeling, Horseleech! ’Slid, you 
Shrovetide Cutpurse, I’ll scald your 
hide with gravy, I will ! ” 

“Ware the pan, ware the pan!” 
all the Blacks cried out ; for the Good 
Woman made a flourish as though she 
would have carried out her threat; 
whereupon my Man-Dog, Jowler, 
thought it was time to interpose, and 
spoke. 

“ There’s no harm in Mother Drum, 


but that her temper’s as hot as her 
pan, and we are late to supper. 
Come, Mother, Draw for us, and save 
you still. I’ll treat you to burnt bran- 
dy afterwards.” 

“ What did he call me Pig-Woman 
for ? ” she grumbled, but still half 
mollified. “What if I did waste my 
youth and prime in cooking of porkers 
in a booth; I am no cutpurse. I, I 
never shoved the tumbler for tail- 
drawing or poll-snatching on a levee- 
day. But I will draw for you, and 
welcome my guests of the game.” 

“And Supper, good Moll, Supper,” 
added Jowler. 

“ An you had not hindered me, it 
would have been ready upstairs. There 
are more upstairs besides you that hun- 
ger after the fat and the lean. But 
can you sup without a cook? Will 
venison run off the spit ready roasted, 
think you, like the pigs in Lubberland, 
that jump down your throat, and cry 
wee wee ? ” 

She began to bustle about, and sum- 
moned, by the name of Cicely Grip — 
adding thereto the epithet of “faggot” 
— a stout serving-lass, who f might have 
been comely enough, but whose face 
and hands were very nearly as black 
as those of the Man-Dog’s. This 
wench brought a number of brown 
jugs full of beer, and the Blacks took 
to drinking with much zest. Then 
Jowler, who seemed a kind of lieu- 
tenant, in some authority over them, 
gave the word of command to “ Peel ; ” 
and they hastened to leave the room, 
which was but a mean sort of barn- 
like chamber, with bare walls, a wat- 
tled roof, and a number of rough 
wooden tables and settles, all littered 
With jugs and Tobacco pipes. So I 
and the Fat Woman and Jowler, Cicely 
Grip having betaken herself to the 
kitchen, were left together. 

“ Cicely will dish up, Mother Drum,” 
he says ; “ you have fried collops enow 
for us, I trow ; and if more are wanted 
for the Billy Boys, you can to your 
pan again. You began your brandy 
pottage too early to-night, Mother. 
Let us have no more of your vapors 


The Strange Adventures 

twixt this and day-break, prithee. 
What would Captain Night say ? ” 
u Captain Night be hanged ! ” 

“ He will be hanged, as our brother 
Surly has it, in good time, I doubt it 
not. Meanwhile, order must be kept 
at the Stag o’ Tyne. . Get you and 
draw the dram I promised you ; and, 
Mother, wash me this little lad’s face 
and hands, that he may sit down to 
meat with us in a seemly manner.” 

“Who the Clink is he?” asked 
Mother Drum, eyeing me with no very 
Great Favor. 

“He says he is little Boy Jack,” 
answered Mr. Jowler gravely. “We 
will give him another name before we 
have done with him. Meantime he 
lias a guinea in his pocket to pay his 
shot, and that’s enough for the fat old 
Alewife of the Stag o’ Tyne.” 

“ Fat again ! ” muttered Mother 
Drum. “ Is it a ’Sizes matter to be 
full of flesh ? I be fat indeed,” she 
answered with a sigh, “ and must have 
a chair let out o’ the sides for me, 
that these poor old hips can have play. 
And I, that was of so buxom a figure.” 

“ Nevermind your Figure, Mother,” 
remarked my Conductor, “ but do my 
bidding. I’ll e’en go and peel too ; ” 
and without more ado he leaves us. 

Madam Drum went into her kitchen 
and fetched forth a Tin Bowl full of 
hot suds, and with these she washed 
me as she had been directed. I bore 
it all unresistingly — likewise a scrub- 
bing with a rough towel. Then, when 
my hair was kempt with an old Felt- 
ing comb, almost toothless, I felt re- 
freshed and hungrier than ever. But 
Mother Drum never ceased to complain 
of having been called fat. 

“ Time was, my smooth-fa&d 
Coney,” she said, “ that I was as 
lithe and limber as you are, and was 
called Jaunty Peg. And now poor 
old Moll cooks collops for those that 
are born to dance jigs in chains for the 
north-east wind to play the fiddle to. 
Time was when a whole army followed 
me, when I beat the drum before the 
great Duke.” 


of Captain Dangerous. 

“What Duke?” I asked, looking 
up at her great red face. 

“ What Duke, milksop ! Why, who 
should I mean but the Duke that won 
Hochstedt and Ramilies : — the Ace 
of Trumps, my dear, that saved the 
Queen of Hearts, the good Queen 
Anne, so bravely. What Duke should 
I mean but John o’ Marlborough?” 

“ I have seen him,” I said, with 
childish gravity. 

“ Seen him ! when and where, lob- 
lolly-boy ? You’re too young to have 
been a drummer.” 

“ I saw him,” I answered, blushing 
and stammering ; “I saw him when 
— when I was a little Gentleman.” 

“ Lord save us ! ” cries Mother 
Drum, bursting into a jolly laugh. 
“A Gentleman! since when, your 
Lordship, I pray ? But we’re all Gen- 
tle-folks here, I trow; and Captain 
Night’s the Marquis of Aylesbury Jail. 
A Gentleman ! oho ! ” 

Hereupon, and which, to my great 
relief, quitted me of the perturbation 
brought on by a Rash Admission, there 
came three knocks from above, and 
Mother Drum said hurriedly, “ Sup- 
per, supper ; ” and opening a side-door, 
pushes me on to a staircase, and tells 
me to mount, and pull a reverence to 
the company I found at table. 

Twenty steps brought me to another 
door I found on the jar, and I passed 
into a great room with a roof of wooden 
joists, and a vast table in the middle 
set out with supper. There was no 
table-cloth ; but there were plenty of 
meats smoking hot in great pewter 
dishes. I never saw, either, so many 
bottles and glasses on one board in my 
life ; and besides these, there was good 
store of great shining Flagons, carved 
and chased, which I afterwards knew 
to be of Solid Silver. 

Round this table were gathered at 
least Twenty Men ; and but for their 
voices I should never have known that 
five among them were my companions 
of just now. For all were attired in 
a very brave Manner, wore wigs and 
powder and embroidered waistcoats ; 
52 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


although, what I thought strange, each 
man dined in boots, with a gold-laced 
hat on his head, and his Hanger by his 
side, and a brace of Pistols on the 
table beside him. Yet I must make 
two exceptions to this rule. He whom 
they called Surty had on a full frizzed 
wig and a cassock and bands, that, but 
for his rascal face, would have put me 
in mind of the Parson at St. George’s, 
Hanover Square, who always seemed 
to be so angry with me. Surly was 
Chaplain, and said Grace, and ate and 
drank more than any one there. Last- 
ly, at the table’s head sat a thin, pale, 
proper kind of a man, wearing his own 
hair long, in a silken club, dressed in 
the pink of Fashion, as though he were 
bidden to a birthday, with a dandy 
rapier at his side, and instead of Pis- 
tols, a Black Velvet Visor laid by the 
side of his plate. He had very large 
blue eyes and very fair hair. He 
might have been some thirty-five years 
old, and the guests, who treated him 
with much deference, addressed him 
as Captain Night. 

Mr. Jowler, whose hat had as brave 
a cock as any there, made me sit by 
him ; and, with three more knocks and 
the Parson’s Grace, we all fell to sup- 
per. They helped me plentifully, and 
I ate my fill. Then my friend gave 
me a silver porringer full of wine-and- 
water. It was all very good ; but I 
knew not what viands I was eating, 
and made bold to ask Jowler. 

44 ’Tis venison, boy, that was never 
shot by the King’s keeper,” he an- 
swered. 44 But, if you would be free 
of Charlwood Chase, and wish to get 
out yet with a whole skin, I should 
advise you to eat your meat and ask 
no questions.” 

I was very much frightened at this, 
and said no more until the end of Sup- 
per. When they had finished, they 
fell to drinking of Healths, great bowls 
of Punch being brought to them for 
that purpose. The first toast was the 
King, and that fell to Jowler. 

“ The King !” says he, rising. 

“ Over the water ? ” they ask. 

44 No,” answers Jowler. 44 The King 


everywhere. King James, and God 
bless him.” 

44 1 won’t drink that,” objects the 
Chaplain. 44 You know I am a King 
George man.” 

44 Drink the Foul Fiend, an’ you 
will,” retorts the Proposer. 44 You’d 
be stanch and true either way. Now, 
Billy Boys, the King ! ” 

And they fell to tumbling down on 
their knees, and drinking His Majesty 
in brimming bumpers. I joined in the 
ceremony perforce, although I knew 
nothing about King James, save that 
Monarch my Grandmother used to 
Speak about, who Withdrew himself 
from these kingdoms in the year 1688 ; 
and at Church ’twas King George they 
were wont to pray for, and not King 
James. And little did I ween that, in 
drinking this Great Person on my 
knees, I was disobeying the Precept 
of my dear dead Kinswoman. 

44 1 have a bad foot,” quoth Captain 
Night, 44 and cannot stir from my chair ; 
but I drink all healths that come from 
loyal hearts.” • 

Many more Healths followed. The 
Chaplain gave the Church, 44 and con- 
fusion to Old Rapine, that goes about 
robbing chancels of their chalices, and 
parsons of their dues, and the very 
poor-box of alms.” And then they 
drank, 44 Vert and Venison,” and then, 
44 A black face, a white smock, and a 
red hand.” And then they betook 
themselves to Roaring choruses, and 
Smoking and Drinking galore, until I 
fell fast asleep in my chair. 

I woke up not much before Noon 
the next day, in a neat little chamber 
very cleanly appointed ; but found to 
my surprise that, in addition to my 
ow#clothes, there was laid by my bed- 
side a little Smock or Gaberdine of 
coarse linen, and a bowl full of some 
sooty stuff that made me shudder to 
look at. And my Surprise was heigh- 
tened into amazed astonishment when, 
having donned my own garments, and 
while curiously turning over the Gaber- 
dine, there came a knock, and anon 
stepped into the room that same comely 
Servant-maid that had ridden with us 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


in the Wagon six months since, on that 
sad journey to school, and that had 
been so kind to me in the way of new 
milk and cheesecakes. 

She was very smartly dressed, with 
a gay flowered apron, and a fly-cap all 
over glass-beads, like so many Blue- 
bottles. And she had a gold brooch 
in her stomacher, and fine thread hose, 
and red Heels to her shoes. 

She was as kind to me as ever, and 
told me that I was among those who 
would treat me well, and stand my 
friends, if I obeyed their commands. 
And I, who, I confess, had by this 
time begun to look on the Blacks and 
their Ways with a kind of Schoolboy 
glee, rose, nothing loth, and donned 
the Strange Accoutrements my enter- 
tainers provided for me. The girl 
helped me to dress, smiling and gig- 
gling mightily the while ; but, as I 
dressed, I could not help calling her 
by the name she had given me in the 
Wagon, and asking how she had come 
into that strange Place. 

“Hush, hush !”» says she. “I’m 
Marian now, Maid Marian, that lives 
with Mother Drum, and serves the 
Gentlemen Blacks, and brings Captain 
Night his morning Draught. None of 
us are called by our real names at the 
Stag o’ Tyne, my dear. We all are 
in No-man’s-land.” 

“ But where is No-man’s-land, and 
what is the Stag o’ Tyne ? ” I asked, 
as she slipped the Gaberdine over my 
head. 

“ No-man’s-land is just in the left- 
hand top Corner of Cliarlwood Chase, 
after you have turned to the left, and 
gone as far forward as you can by 
taking two steps backwards for every 
one straight on,” answers the S§ucy 
hussy. “ And the Stag o’ Tyne’s even 
a Christian House of Entertainment 
that Mother Drum keeps.” 

“ And who is Mother Drum ? ” I re- 
sumed, my eyes opening wider than 
ever. 

“A decent Alewife, much given to 
grease, and that cooks the King’s Ven- 
ison for Captain Night and his Gentle- 
men Blacks.” 


“ And Captain Night, — who is 
he?” 

“Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell 
you no lies,” she makes reply. “ Cap- 
tain Night is a Gentleman every inch 
of him, and as sure as Tom o’ Ten 
Thousand.” 

“ And the Gentlemen Blacks ?” 

“ You’re mighty particular,” quoth 
she, regarding me with a comical 
look. “ Well, my dear, since you are 
to be a Black yourself, and a Gentle- 
man to boot, I don’t mind telling you. 
The Gentlemen Blacks are all Bold 
Hearts, that like to kill the King’s 
Venison without a Ranger’s Warrant, 
and to eat of it without paying Fee 
nor Royalty, and that drink of the 
very best — ” 

“ And that have Dog-whips to lay 
about the shoulders of tattling minxes 
and curious urchins,” cries, to my dis- 
may, a voice behind us, and so to us 
— by his voice at least — Captain 
Night, but in his body no longer the 
same gay spark that I had seen the 
night before, or rather that morning 
early. He was as Black, and Hairy, 
and Savage-looking as any — as Jow- 
ler, or any one of that Dark Gang ; 
and in no way differed from them, 
save that on the middle finger of his 
Right Hand there glittered, from out 
all his Grease and Soot, a Great Dia- 
mond Ring. 

“ Come,” he cries, “ Mistress Nim- 
ble Tongue, will you be giving your 
Red Rag a gallop yet, and Billy Boys 
waiting to break their Fast ? Des- 
patch, and set out the boy, as I bade 
you.” 

“I am no kitchen-wench, I,” an- 
swers the Maid of the Wagon, tossing 
her head. “ Cicely o’ the Cinders 
yonder will bring you to your umble- 
pie, and a Jack of small-beer to cool 
you, I trow. Was it live Charcoal 
or Seacoal embers that you swallowed 
last night, Captain, makes you so dry 
this morning?” 

“Never mind, Goody Slack' Jaw,” 
says Captain Night. “I shall bo 
thirstier anon from listening to your 
prate. Will you hurry now, Gadfly, 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


or is the sun to sink before we get 
hounds in leash? ” 

Thus admonished, the girl takes me 
by the arm, and, without more ado, 
dips a rag in the pot of black pigment, 
and begins to smear all my hands, 
and face, and throat, with dabs of 
disguising shade. And, as she bade 
me do the same to my Garment, and 
never spare Soot, I fell to work too, 
making myself into the likeness of a 
Chimney-boy, till they might have 
taken me into a nursery to Frighten 
naughty children. 

Captain Night sat by himself on the 
side of the bed, idly clicking a pistol- 
lock till such time as he proceeded to 
load it, the which threw me into a 
cold tremor, not knowing but that 
it might be the Custom among the 
Gentlemen Blacks to blow out the 
brains in the morning of those they 
had feasted over-niglit. Yet, as there 
never was Schoolboy, I suppose, but 
delighted in Soiling of his raiment, 
and making himself as Black as any 
Sweep in Whetstone Park, so did I 
begin to feel something like a Pleasure 
in being masqueraded up in this Dis- 
guise, and began to wish for a Pistol 
such as Captain Night had in his Hand, 
and such a Diamond Ring as he wore 
on his finger. 

“ There ! ” cries the Maid of the 
Wagon, when I was well Blacked, 
surveying me approvingly. “ You’re 
a real imp of Chari wood Chase now. 
Ugh ! thou young Rig ! I’ll kiss you 
when the Captain brings you home, 
and good soap and water takes off 
those mourning weeds before supper- 
time. ” 

She had clapped a great Deerskin 
cap on my head, and giving me a 
friendly pat, was going off, when I 
could not help asking her in a sly 
whisper what had become of the 
Pewterer of Pannier Alley. 

u What ! you remember him, do 
you ? ” she returned, with a half-smile 
and a half-sigh. “Well, the Pewter- 
er’s here, and as black as you are. ” 

“ But I thought you were to wed, ” 
I remarked. 


“Well!” she went on, almost 
fiercely, “ cannot one wed at the Stag 
o’ Tyne ? We have a brave Chaplain 
down-stairs, — as good as a Fleet Par- 
son any day, I wuss.” 

“But the Pewterer ? ” I persisted. 

“ I’ll hang the Pewterer round thy 
neck ! ” she exclaimed, in a pet. 
“ The Pewterer was unfortunate in 
his business, and so took to the Road ; 
and thus we have all come together in 
Charlwood Chase. But ask me no 
more questions, or Captain Night will 
be deadly angry. Look, he fumes al- 
ready. ” 

She tripped away saying fliis, and 
in Time, I think ; for indeed the Cap- 
tain was beginning to show signs of 
impatience. She being gone, he took 
me on his knee, all Black as I was, 
and in a voice kind enough, but full 
of authority, bade me tell him all my 
History and the bare truth, else would 
he have me tied neck and heels and 
thrown to the fishes. 

So I told this strange Man all : — 
of Hanover Square, and my earliest 
childhood. Of the Unknown Lady, 
and her Behavior and conversation, 
even to her Death. Of her Funeral, 
and the harsh bearing of Mistress 
Talmash and the Steward Cadwalla- 
der unto me in my Helplessness and 
Loneliness. Of my being smuggled 
away in a Wagon and sent to school 
to Gnawbit, and of the Barbarous cru- 
elty with which I had been treated by 
that Monster. And finally, of the old 
Gentleman that used to cry, “Bear it! 
Bear it!” and of his giving me a 
Guinea, and bidding me run away. 

He listened to all I had to say, and 
then putting me down, — 

“ A strange story,” he thoughtfully 
remarks, “ and not learnt out of the 
story-books either, or I sorely err. 
You have not a Lying Face, my man. 
Wait awhile and you’ll wear a Mask 
thicker than all that screen of soot 
you have upon you now.” But in this 
he was mistaken ; for John Dangerous 
ever scorned deception, and through 
life has always acted fair and above- 
board. 


55 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


“ And that Guinea, ” he continued. 
“Hast it still?” 

I answered that I had, producing 
it as I spoke, and that I was ready to 
pay my Reckoning, and to treat him 
and* the others, in which, meseems, 
there spoke less of the little Runaway 
Schoolboy that had turned Sweep, 
than of the Little Gentleman that was 
wont to be a Patron to his Grand- 
mother’s lacqueys in Hanover Square. 

“Keep thy piece of Gold,” he an- 
swers, with a smile. “Thou shalt 
pay thy footing soon enough. Or 
wilt thou go forth with thy Guinea and 
spend it, and be taken by the School- 
master to be whipped, perchance to 
death?” 

I replied that I had the much rather 
stay with him, and the Gentlemen. 

“The less said of the ‘Gentlemen’ 
the better. However, ’tis all one : we 
are all Gentlemen at the Stag o’ Tyne. 
Even thou art a Gentleman, little 
Ragamuff.” 

“ I am a Gentleman of long descent ; 
and my fathers have fought and bled 
for the True King; and Norman 
blood’s better than German puddle- 
mud,” I replied, repeating well-nigh 
Mechanically that which my dear 
Kinswoman had said to me, and In- 


stilled into me many and many a time. 
In my degraded Slavery, I had well - 
nigh forgotten the proud old words; 
but only once it chanced that they had 
risen up unbidden, when I was flouted 
and jeered at as Little Boy Jack by 
my schoolmates. Heaven help us, 
how villanously cruel are children to 
those who are of their own age and 
Poor and Friendless ! What is it that 
makes young hearts so Hard ? The 
boys Derided and mocked me more 
than ever for that I said I was a Gen- 
tleman ; and by and by comes Gnaw- 
bit, and beats me black and blue — ay 
and gory too — with a furze-stub, for 
telling of Lies, as he falsely said, the 
Ruffian. 

“Well,” resumed Captain Night, 
“thou shalt stay with us, young Gen- 
tleman. But weigh it soberly, boy,” 
he continued. “Thou art old enough 
to know black from white, and brass 
from gold. Be avised; know what 
we Blacks are. We are only Thieves 
that go about stealing the King’s Deer 
in Charlwood Chase.” 

I told him that I would abide by him 
and his Company; and with a grim 
smile he clapped me on the shoulder, 
and told me that now indeed I was a 
Gentleman Black, and Forest Free. 

56 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


Chapter the Eighth. 

THE END OF MY ADVENTURES AMONG 

the Blacks. 

Were I to give vent to that Gar- 
rulity which grows upon us Veterans 
with Gout and the Gravel, and the 
kindred ailments of Age, this Account 
of my Life would never reach beyond 
the record of Boyhood. For from 
the first Flower of my freshest child- 
hood to the time that I became toward 
to the more serious Business of this 
World, I think I could set down Day 
by Day, and well nigh Hour by Hour, 
all the things that have occurred to 
me. How is it that I preserve so 
keen a Remembrance of a little lad’s 
joys and sorrows, when I can scarcely 
recall how many times I have suffered 
Shipwreck in later age, or tell how 
many Sansfoy Miscreants, caring nei- 
ther for Heaven or man a Point, I 
have slain ? Nay, from what cause 
does it proceed that I, upon whom the 
broken reliques of my Schoolmaster’s 
former Cruelty are yet Green, and 
who can conjure up all the events 
that bore upon my Running away into 
Chari wood Chase, even to the dog- 
gish names of the Blacks, their ribald 
talk, and the fleering of the Women 
they had about them, find it sore 
travail to remember what I had for 
dinner yesterday, what friends I con- 
versed with, what Tavern I supped 
at, what news I read in the Gazette ? 
But ’tis the knowledge of that over- 
weening Craving to count up the trivial 
Things of my Youth that warns me 
to use despatch, even if the chronicle 
of my after doings be but a short 
summary or sketch of so many Perils 
by Land and Sea. And for this man- 
ner of the remotest things being the 
more distinct aud dilated upon, let me 


put it to a Man of keen vision, if, 
whirling along a High Road in a 
rapid carriage, he has not marked, 
first, that the Palings and Milestones 
close by have passed beneath him in a 
confused and jarring swiftness ; next, 
that the Trees, Hedges, &c., of the 
middleplan (as the limners call it) 
have moved slower and with more 
Deliberation, yet somewhat Fitfully, 
and encroaching on each other’s out- 
lines ; whereas the extreme distance 
in Clouds, Mountains, far-off Hill- 
sides, and the like, have seemed re- 
mote, indeed, but stationary, clear, 
and unchangeable ; so that you could 
count the fissures in the hoar rocks, 
and the very sheep still feeding on the 
smooth slopes, even as they fed fifty 
years ago ? And who (let his later 
life have been ever so fortunate) does 
not preferably dwell on that sharp 
prospect so clearly yet so light loom- 
ing through the Long Avenue of years. 

It was not, I will frankly admit, a 
very righteous beginning to a young 
life to be hail-fellow well-met with a 
Gang of Deer-Stealers, and to go 
careering about the King’s Forest in 
quest of Venison which belonged to 
the Crown. Often have I felt remorse- 
ful for so having wronged his Majesty 
(whom Heaven preserve for the safety 
of these distraught kingdoms); but 
wh|d was I, an’ it please you, to do ? 
Little Boy Jack was just little Boy 
Beggar ; and for want of proper 
Training he became Little Boy Thief. 
Not that I ever pilfered aught. I was 
no Candle-snuffer filcher, and, save in 
the matter of Fat Bucks, the rest of 
our Gang were, indeed, passing hon- 
est. Part of the Venison we killed 
(mostly with a larger kind of Bird- 
Bolt, or Arbalest Crossbow, for 
through fear of the keepers we used 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


as little powder and ball as possible) 
we ate for our Sustenance ; for rogues 
must eat and drink as well as other 
folks. The greater portion, however, 
was discreetly conveyed, in carts cov- 
ered over with garden-stuff, to the 
market-towns of Uxbridge, Windsor, 
and Reading, and sold, under the 
coat-tail as we called it, to Higglers 
who were in our secret. Sometimes 
our Merchandise was taken right into 
London, where we found a good 
Market with the Fishmongers dwell- 
ing about Lincoln’s Inn, and who, as 
they did considerable traffic with the 
Nobility and Gentry, of whom they 
took Park Venison, giving them Fish 
in exchange, were not likely to be 
suspected of unlawful dealings, or at 
least were able to make a colourable 
pretext of Honest Trade to such Con- 
stables and Market Conners who had 
a right to question them about their 
barterings. From the Fishmongers 
we took sometimes money and some- 
times rich apparel — the cast-off 
clothes, indeed, of the Nobility, birth- 
day suits or the like, which were not 
good enough for the Players of Drury 
Lane and Lincoln’s Inn, forsooth, to 
strut about in on their tragedy-boards, 
and which they had therefore be- 
stowed upon their domestics to sell. 
For our Blacks loved to quit their 
bewrayed apparel at supper-time, and 
to dress themselves as bravely as when 
I first tasted their ill-gotten meat at 
the Stag o’ Tyne. From the Hig- 
glers, too, we would as willingly take 
Wine, strong Waters, and Tobacco, 
in exchange for our fat and lean, as 
money ; for the Currency of the Realm 
was then most wofully clipped and 
defaced, and our Brethren had a 
wholesome avoidance of meddling 
with Bank Bills. When, from time 
to time, one of us ventured to a 
Market-town, well made-up as a de- 
cent Yeoman or Merchant’s Rider, 
'twas always payment on the Nail, 
and in sounding money for the reck- 
oning. We ran no scores, and paid 
in no paper. 

It was long ere I found out that the 


Wagon in which I had travelled from 
the Hercules’ Pillars, to be delivered 
over to Gnawbit, was conducted by 
one of the most trusted Confederates 
of our Company ; that he took V eni- 
son to town for them, and brought 
them back the Account in specie or 
needments as they required. And 
although I am loth to think that the 
pretty Servant Maid was altogether 
deceiving me when she told me she 
was going to see her Grandmother, I 
fancy that she knew Charlwood Chase, 
and the gentry that inhabited it, as 
well as she knew the Pewterer in 
Panyer Alley. He went a-pewtering 
no more, if ever he had been 'prentice 
or done journey-work for that trade, 
but was neither more nor less than 
one of the Blacks, and Mistress Sly- 
boots, his Flame, kept him company. 
Although I hope, I am sure, that they 
were Married by the Chaplain ; for 
rough as I am, I had ever a Hatred 
of Unlawful Passions, and when I am 
summoned on a Jury, always listen 
to the King’s Proclamation against 
Vice and Immorality with much gusto 
and savour. 

I stayed with the Blacks in Chari- 
wood Chase until I grew to be a 
sturdy lad of twelve years of age. I 
went out with them and followed 
their naughty courses, and have strick- 
en down many a fat Buck in my time. 
Ours was the most jovial but the most 
perilous of lives. The Keepers were 
always on our track ; and sometimes 
the Sheriff would call out the Posse 
Comitatis, and he and half the beef-fed 
tenant-farmers of the country-side 
would come horsing and hoofing it 
about the glades to catch us. For 
weeks together in each year we dared 
not keep our rendezvous at the Stag, 
but were fain to hide in Brakes and 
Hollow Trees, listening to the pur- 
suit as it grew hot and heavy around 
us ; and often with no better Victuals 
than Pig’s-meat and Ditch-water. 
But then the search would begin to 
lag; and two or three of the great 
Squires round about being well terri- 
fied by letters written in a liquid de- 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


signed to counterfeit Blood, with a 
great Skull and Cross-bones scrawled 
at the bottom, the whole signed u Cap- 
tain Night,” and telling them that if 
they dared to meddle with the Blacks 
their Lives should pay for it, we were 
left quiet for a season, and could re- 
turn to our Haunt, there to feast and 
carouse according to custom. Nor 
am I slow to believe that some of the 
tolerance we met with was due to our 
being known to the County Gentry as 
stanch Tories, and as stanch detesters 
of the House of Hanover (I speak, of 
course, of my companions, for I was 
of years too tender to have any poli- 
tics). We never killed a Deer but 
on the nearest tree some one of us out 
with his Jack-knife and carved on the 
bark of it, “ Slain by King James’s 
order ; ” or, if there were no time for 
so long a legend, or the Beast was 
stricken in the Open, a simple K. J. 
(which the Hanover Rats understood 
well enough, whether cut in the trunk 
or the turf) sufficed. The Country 
Gentlemen were then of a very furi- 
ous way of thinking concerning the 
Rights of the present Illustrious House 
to the Throne ; but Times do alter, 
and so likewise do Men’s Thoughts 
and Opinions, and I dare swear there 
is no Brunswicker or Church of Eng- 
land man more leal at this present 
writing than John Dangerous. 

Captain Night, to whom I was a 
kind of Page or Henchman, used me 
with much tenderness. Whenever at 
supper the tongues grew too loosened, 
and wild talk, and of the wickedest, 
began to jingle among the bottles and 
glasses, he would bid me Withdraw, 
and go keep company for a time with 
Mistress Slyboots. Captain Night 
was a man of parts and even of letters ; 
and I often wondered why he, who 
seemed so well fitted to Shine even 
among the Great, should pass his 
time among Rogues, and take the 
thing that was not his. He was often 
absent from us for many days, some- 
times for nigh a month ; and would 
return sunburnt and travel-stained, as 
though he had been journeying in 


Foreign Parts. He was always very 
thoughtful and reserved after these 
Gaddings about; and Mistress Sly- 
boots, the Maid, used to say that he 
was in Love, and had been playing 
the gallant to some fine Madam. But 
I thought otherwise : for at this sea- 
son it was his custom to bring back a 
Valise full to the very brim of letters 
and papers, the which he would take 
Days to read and re-read, noting and 
seemingly copying some, but burning 
the greater portion. At this season 
he would refrain from joining the 
Gang, and honorably foreswore his 
share of their plunder, always giving 
Mother Drum a broad piece for each 
night’s Supper, Bottle, and Bed. But 
when his pressing business was over, 
no man was keener in the chase, or 
brought down the quarry so skilfully 
as Captain Night. He loved to have 
me with him, to talk to and Question 
me ; and it was one day, after I had 
told him that the Initial letter D was 
the only clue to my Grandmother’s 
name, which I had seen graven on 
her Coffin-plate, he must needs tell 
me that if she were Madam (or rather 
the Lady) D — , I must needs, as a 
Kinsman, be D — too, and that he 
would piece out the name, and call 
me Dangerous. So that I was Little 
Boy Jack no more, and John Danger- 
ous I have been from that day to this. 
Not but what my Ancestry and Be- 
longings might warrant me in assum- 
ing another title, than which — so far 
as lineage counts — Bourbon or Nassau 
could not rank much higher. But the 
name of Dangerous has pleased me 
alway; it has stood me in stead ip. 
many a hard pass, and I am content 
to abide by it now that my locks are 
gray, and the walls of this my batr 
tered old tenement are crumbling intp 
decay. 

’Twas I alone that was privileged 
to stay with Captain Night when he 
was doing Secretary’s work among his 
papers ; for, save when Mistress Sly- 
boots came up to him — discreetly tap- 
ping at the door first, you may be 
sure — with a cup of ale and a toast, 
59 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


ho would abide no other company. 
And on such days as I wore not my 
Black Disguisement, but the better 
clothes he had provided for me, — a 
little Riding Suit of red drugget, silver- 
laced, and a cock to my hat like a 
Military Officer, — and felt myself as 
grand as you please. * I never dared 
speak to him until he spoke to me ; 
but used to sit quietly enough sharp- 
ening bolts or twisting bowstrings, or 
cleaning his Pistols, or furbishing up 
his Hanger and Belt, or such-like boy- 
ish pastime-labor. He was careful 
to burn every paper that he Discarded 
after taking it from the Valise ; but 
once, and once only, a scrap remained 
unconsumed on the hearth, the which, 
with my ape-like curiosity of half-a- 
score summers, I must needs spell 
over, although I got small good there- 
from. ’Twas but the top of a letter, 
and all the writing I could make out 
ran, — 

•• St. Germaine, August the twelfth. 

“My dear” . . . 

and here it broke off, and baffled me. 

Whenever Captain Night went a 
hunting, I attended upon him ; but 
when he was away, I was confided to 
the care of Jowler, who, albeit much 
given to brabble in his liquor, was 
about the most discreet (the Chaplain 
always excepted) among the Gang. 
In the dead season, when Venison 
was not to be had, or was nothing 
worth for the Market if it had been 
killed, we lived mostly on dried meats 
and cured salmon ; the first prepared 
by Mother Drum and her maid, the 
last furnished us by our good friends 
and Chapmen the Fishmongers about 
Lincoln’s Inn. And during this same 
Dead Season, I am glad to say that 
my Master did not suffer me to remain 
idle ; but, besides taking some pains 
in tutoring me himself, moved our 
Chaplain, all of whose humane letters 
had not been washed out by burnt 
Brandy or fumed out by Tobacco (to 
the use of which he was immoderately 
given), to put me through a course of 
daily instruction. I had had some 
Latin beaten into me by Gnawbit, 


when he had nothing of more moment 
to bestir himself about, and had at- 
tained a decent proficiency in reading 
and writing. Under the Chaplain of 
the Blacks, who swore at me griev- 
ously, but never, under the direst for- 
bidding, laid finger on me, I became 
a current scholar enough of my own 
tongue, with just such a little smatter- 
ing of the Latin as helped me at a 
pinch in some of the Secret Dealings 
of my later career. But Salt W ater 
has done its work upon my Lilly’s 
Grammar ; and although I yield to 
no man in the Faculty of saying what 
I mean, ay, and of writing it down in 
good plain English (’tis true that of 
your nominatives and genitives and 
stuff, I know nothing) , I question if I 
could tell you the Latin for a pair of 
riding-boots. 

There was a paltry parcel of books 
at the Stag o’ Tyne, and these I read 
over and over again at my leisure. 
There was a History of the Persecu- 
tions undergone by the Quakers, and 
Bishop Sprat’s Narrative of the Con- 
spiracy of Blackhead and the others 
against him. There was Foxe’s 
Martyrs, and God’s Revenge against 
Murder (a very grim tome), and Mr. 
Daniel Defoe’s Life of Moll Flanders, 
and Colonel Jack. These, with two 
or three Play-books, and a Novel of 
Mrs. Aphra Behn (very scurrilous), 
a few Ballads, and some ridiculous 
Chap-books about Knights and Fairies 
and Dragons, made up the tattered 
and torn library of our house in 
Charlwood Chase. ’Twas good enough, 
you may say, for a nest of Deer- 
stealers. Well, there might have 
been a worse one ; but these, I can 
aver, with English and Foreign news- 
papers and letters, and my Bible in 
later life, have been all the reading 
that John Dangerous can boast of. 
Which makes me so mad against your 
fine Scholars and Scribblers, who, be- 
cause they can turn verse and make 
Te-to-tum into Greek, must needs 
sneer at me at the Coffee House, and 
make a butt of an honest man who 
has been from one end of the world to 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, 


the other, and has fought his way 
through it to Fortune and Honor. 

I was in the twelfth year of my age 
when a great change overtook me in 
my career. Moved, as it would seem, 
to exceeding Anger and implacable 
Disgust by the carryings-on of Captain 
Night and his merry men in Chari- 
wood Chase, the King’s Ministers put 
forth a Proclamation against us, 
promising heavy Blood Money to any 
who would deliver us, or any one 
member of the Gang, into the hands 
of Authority. This Proclamation 
came at first to little. There was no 
sending a troop of horse into the 
Chase, and the husbandmen of the 
country-side were too good Friends of 
ours to play the Judas. We were not 
Highway Robbers. Not one of our 
band had ever taken to or been taken 
from the Road. Rascals of the Car- 
touche and Macheath kidney we Dis- 
dained. We were neither Foot-pads 
nor Cutpurses, nay, nor Smugglers 
nor Rick-burners. We were only 
Unfortunate Gentlemen, who much 
did need, and who had suffered much 
for our politics and our religion, and 
had no other means of earning a live- 
lihood than by killing the King’s Deer. 
Those peasants whom we came across 
Feared us, indeed, as they would the 
very Fiend, but bore us no malice; 
for we always treated them with ci- 
vility, and not rarely gave them the 
’Umbles and other inferior parts of 
the Deer, against their poor Christen- 
ings and Lyings-in. And through 
these means, and some small money 
presents our Captain would make to 
their wives and callow brats, it came 
to pass that Mother Drum had seldom 
cause to brew aught but the smallest 
beer for morning drinking ; for though 
we had to pay for our Wine and Ar- 
dent Drinks, the cellar of the Stag o’ 
Tyne was always handsomely fur- 
nished with barrels of strong ale, 
which Dobbin Clout or Colin Mayfly, 
the Hind or the Plough-churl, would 
bring us secretly by night in their 
Wains for gratitude. I know not 
where they got the Malt from, but 


there was narrow a fault to find with 
the Brew. I recollect its savor now 
with a sweet tooth, condemned as I 
am to the inky Hog’s-wash which the 
Londoners call Porter ; and indeed it 
is fit for Porters to drink, but not for 
Gentlemen. These Peasants used to 
tremble all over with terror when they 
came to the Stag o’ Tyne ; but they 
were always hospitably made welcome, 
and sent away with full gizzards, ay, 
and with full heads too, and by potions 
to which the louts were but little used. 

We had no fear of treachery from 
these Chawbacons, but we had Ene- 
mies in the Chase nevertheless. Here 
dwelt a vagabond tribe of Bastard 
Yerderers and Charcoal-burners, sav- 
age, ignorant, brutish Wretches, as 
superstitious as the Manilla Creoles. 
They were one-half gipsies, and one 
half, or perhaps a quarter, trade-fallen 
whippers-in and keepers that had been 
stripped of their livery. They picked 
up their sorry crust by burning of 
charcoal, and carting of dead wood to 
farmers for to consume in their ingles. 
Now and again, when any of the 
Quality came to hunt in the Chase, 
the Head Keeper would make use of 
a score or so of them as beaters and 
rabble-prickers of the game ; but nine 
months out of the twelve they rather 
starved than lived. These Charcoal- 
burners hated us Blacks, first, because 
in our sable disguise we rather imi- 
tated their own Beastly appearance — 
for the varlets never washed from 
Candlemas to Shrovetide ; next, be- 
cause we were Gentlemen ; and lastly, 
because we would not suffer them to 
catch Deer for themselves in pitfalls 
and springes. Nay, a True Gentle- 
man Black meeting a “ Coaley,” as 
we called the charcoal fellows, with 
so much as a hare, a rabbit, or a 
pheasant with him, let alone venison, 
would ofttimes give him a sackful of 
sore bones to carry as well as a game- 
bag. No “Coaley ’’was ever let to 
slake his thirst at the Stag o’ Tyne. 
The poor wretches had a miserable 
hovel of an inn to their own part on 
the western outskirts of the Chase, a 

61 


The Strange Adventures 

place by the sign of the Hand and 
Hatchet, where they ate their rye- 
bread and drank their sour Clink, 
when they could muster coppers enough 
for a twopenny carouse. 

This Proclamation, of which at first 
we made light, was speedily followed 
by a real live Act of Parliament, which 
is yet, I have been told, Law, and is 
known as the “Black Act.” The 
most dreadful punishments were de- 
nounced against us by the Houses of 
Lords and Commons, and the Blood 
Money was doubled. One of the most 
noted Thief-takers of that day — almost 
as great a one as Jonathan Wild — 
comes down post, and sets up his Stand- 
ard at Reading, as though he had been 
King William on the Banks of the 
Boyne. With him he brings a mangy 
Rout of Constables and Bailiff’s Fol- 
lowers, and other kennel-ranging vaga- 
bonds ; and now nothing must serve him 
but to beg of the Commanding Officer 
at Windsor (my Lord Treherne) for 
a loan of two companies of the Foot 
Guards, who, nothing loth for field- 
sport and extra pay, were placed, with 
their captain and all — more shame for 
a Gentleman to mix in such Hang- 
man’s work! — under Mr. Thief-taker’s 
orders. He and his Bandogs, ay, and 
his Grenadiers, might have hunted us 
through Charlwood Chase until Dooms- 
day but for the treachery of the “ Coal- 
eys.” ’Twas one of their number, — 
named, or rather nicknamed, “ the 
Beau,” because he washed his face on 
Sunday, and was therefore held to be 
of the first fashion, — who earned 
eighty pounds by revealing the hour 
when the whole Gang of Blacks might 
be pounced upon at the Stag o’ Tyne. 
The infamous wretch goes to Ayles- 
bury, — for our part of 'the Chase was 
in the county of Bucks, — and my 
Thief-taking gentleman from Reading 
meets him — a pretty couple ; and he 
makes oath before Mr. Justice Cribfee 
(who should have set him in the Stocks, 
or delivered him over to the Beadle for 
a vagrant) ; and after a fine to-do of 
Sheriff’s business and swearing in of 
special constables, the end of it was, 


of Captain Dangerous. 

that a whole Rout of them, Sheriff, 
Javelin-men, and Headboroughs and 
all, with the Grenadiers at their back, 
came upon us unawares one moonlight 
night as we were merrily supping at 
the Stag. 

’Twas no use showing Fight per- 
haps, for we were undermanned, some 
of us being away on the scent, for we 
suspected some foul play. The con- 
stables and other clodhopping Algua- 
zils were all armed to the teeth with 
Bills and Blunderbusses, Pistols and 
Hangers ; but had they worn all the 
weapons in the Horse Armory in the 
Tower, it would not have saved them 
from shivering in their shoes when 
“Hard and sharp” was the word, 
and an encounter with the terrible 
Blacks had to be endured. We should 
have made mince-meat of them all, 
and perhaps hanged up one or two of 
them outside the inn as an extra sign- 
post. But we were not only unarmed, 
we were . overmatched, my hearties. 
There were the Redcoats, burn them ! 
How many times in my life have I 
been foiled and baffled by those mis- 
created men-machines in scarlet blan- 
keting! No use in a stout Heart, no 
use in a strong Hand, no use in a sharp 
Sword, or a pair of barkers with teeth 
that never fail, when you have to do 
with a Soldier. Do ! What are you 
to do with him ? There he is, with 
his shaven face and his hair powdered, 
as if he were going to a fourpenny 
fandango at Bagnigge Wells. There 
he is, as obstinate as a Pig, and as 
firm as a Rock, with his confounded 
bright firelock, bayonet, and cross- 
belts. There he is, immovable and 
unconquerable, defying the boldest of 
Smugglers, the bravest of Gentlemen 
Rovers, and by the Lord Harry, he 
eats you up. Always give the Red- 
coats a wide birth, my dear, and the 
Grenadiers more than all. 

Unequal as were the odds, with all 
these Roaring Dragons, in scarlet 
baize, on our trail, we had still a most 
desperate fight for it. While the mob 
of Constables kept cowering in the 
bar-room down-stairs, crying out to 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


us to surrender in the King’s name, — 
I believe that one poor creature, the 
J ustice of Peace, after getting himself 
well walled up in a corner with chairs 
and tables, began to quaver out the 
King’s Proclamation against the 
Blacks, — the plaguy Soldiers came 
blundering up both pair of stairs, and 
fell upon us Billy Boys tooth and nail. 
’Slid ! my blood simmers when I think 
of it. Over went the tables and set- 
tles ! Smash went trenchers and 
cups and glasses ! Clink-a-clink went 
sword-blades and bayonet ! “ And 

don’t fire, my lads ! ” cries out the Sol- 
dier-officer to his Grannies. “We 
want all these rogues to hang up at 
Aylesbury Gaol.” 

“ Pogue yourself, and back to your 
Mother ! ” cries Captain Night, very 
pale ; but I never saw him look Bolder 
or Handsomer. “ Rogue in your 
Tripes, you Hanover Rat!” and he 
shortens his sword and rushes on the 
Soldier-officer. 

The Grenadier Captain was brave 
enough, but he was but a smock-faced 
lad fresh from the Mall and St. J ames’s 
Guard-room, and he had no chance 
against a steady practised Swordsman 
and Forest Blood, as Captain Night 
was. We all thought he would make 
short work of the Soldier-officer. He 
had him in a corner, and the Chaplain, 
a-top of whom was a Grenadier try- 
ing to throttle or capture him, or both, 
exclaims, “ Give him the grace-blow, 
my dear ; give it him under the fifth 
rib ! ” when Captain Night cries “Go 
home to your mother, Milksop ! ” aud 
he catches his own sword by the hilt, 
hits his Enemy a blow on the right 
wrist enough to numb it for a month, 
twists his fingers in his cravat, flings 
him on one side, and right into the 
middle of a punch-bowl, and then, 
upon my word, he, himself jumps out 
of Window, shouting out, “Follow 
me, little Jack Dangerous !” 

I wished for nothing better, and had 
already my leg on the sill, when two 
great hulking Grenadiers seized hold 
of me. ’Twas then, for the first time, 
that I earned a just claim and title to 


the name of Dangerous; for a little 
dirk I was armed with being wrested 
from me by Soldier number one, who 
eggs on his comrade to collar the young 
Fox-cub, as he calls me, I seize a 
heavy Stone- Demijohn full of brandy, 
and smash it goes on the head of Sol- 
dier number two. He falls with a 
dismal groan, the blood and brandy 
running in equal measure from his 
head, and the first Soldier runs his 
bayonet through me. 

Luckily, ’twas but a flesh-wound in 
the flank, and no vital part was touch- 
ed. It was enough for me, however, 
poor Urchin, — enough to make me 
tumble down in a dead faint; and 
when I came to myself, I found that 
I had been removed to the bar-room 
down-stairs, where I made one of nine- 
teen Blacks, all prisoners to the King 
for stealing his Deer, and all bound 
hand and foot with Ropes. 

“Never mind their hurting your 
wrists, young Hempseed,” chuckled 
one of the scaldpated constable rogues 
who was guarding us. “You’ll have 
enough to tighten your gullet after 
’Sizes, as sure as eggs is eggs.” 

“Nay, brother Grimstock, the elf’s 
too young to be hanged,” puts in 
another constable, with somewhat of 
a charitable visage. 

“Too young ! ” echoes he addressed 
as Grimstock. “ ’Twas bred in the 
bone in him, the varmint, and the 
Gallows Fever will come out in the 
flesh. Too young! he was weaned 
on rue, and rode between his Father’s 
legs (that swung) i’ the cart to Tyburn, 
and never sailed a cockboat but in 
Execution Dock. My tobacco-box to 
a tester an’ he dance not on nothing if 
he comes to holding up his hand before 
Judge Blackcap, that never spared but 
one in the Calendar, and then ’twas by 
Mistake.” 

These were not very comfortable 
news for me, poor manacled wretch : 
and with a great bayonet-wound in 
my side to boot, that had been but 
clumsily dressed by a village Leech, 
who was, I suspect, a Farrier and Cow 
Doctor as well. But I have always 
63 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


found, in this life’s whirligig, that 
when your Case is at the worst (unless 
a Man indeed Dies, when there is 
nothing more to be done) , it is pretty 
sure to mend, if you lie quiet and let 
things take their chance. I could not 
be much worse off than I was, wounded 
and friendless and a captive ; and so I 
held my tongue, and let them use me as 
they woul$. Some scant comfort was it, 
however, to find, when the battle-field 
was gone over, that, besides the 
Grenadier whose crown we had crack- 
ed, another had been pistoled by Jowl- 
er, and lay mortally wounded, and 
Groaning Dismally. Poor Jowler 
himself would never pistol Foe more. 
He was dead; for the Men of War, 
furious at our desperate Resistance, at 
the worsting of their fine-feathered 
officer (who was mumbling of his 
bruised hand as a down-trodden Hound 
would its paw, and cursing mean- 
while, which Dogs use not to do) , and 
driven to Mad Rage by the escape of 
Captain Night, had fired pell- mell into 
a Group of which Jowler made one, 
and so killed him. A bullet through 
his brain set him clean quit of all in- 
dictments under the Black Act, before 
our Sovereign Lord the King. Like- 
wise was it a matter of rejoicing for 
our party that, after long seeking the 
Traitor Coaley, the wretched “Beau” 
was found duly strangled, and com- 
pletely a Corpse on the staircase. There 
was something curious about the man- 
ner of justice coming to this villain. 
The Deed had been done with no 
weapon more Lethal than an old 
Stocking; yet so tightly was it tied 
round his false neck, that it had to be 
cut off piecemeal, and even then the 
ribs of the worsted were found to be 
Imbedded, and to have made Furrows 
in his flesh. Now it is certain that 
we Blacks had not laid about us with 
old Wives’ hose, any more than we 
had lunged at our enemies with knit- 
ting-needles. There, however, was 
Monsieur Judas, as dead as a Dolphin 
two hours on deck. Lord, what an 
ugly' countenance had the losel when 
they came to wash the charcoal off 


him ! As to who had forestalled the 
Hangman in his office, no certain tes- 
timony could be given. I have always 
found at Sea, when any doubts arise 
as to the why and the wherefore of a 
gentleman’s death, that the best way 
to settle accounts is to fling him over- 
board ; but on dry land your plaguy 
Dead Body is a sore Stumbling Block 
and Impediment, always turning up 
when it is not Wanted, and bringing 
other Gentlemen into all kinds of 
trouble. Crowner’s Quest was held 
on the “Beau;” and I only wonder 
that they did not bring it in murder 
against Me. The jury sat a long time 
without making up their minds, till 
the parish constable ordered them in 
a bowl of Flip, upon which they pro- 
ceeded to bring in a verdict of Wilful 
Murder against some person or persons 
unknown. I can scarcely, to this day, 
bring myself to suspect my pretty 
maid, that should have married the 
Pewterer, of such a bold Act, and the 
rather believe that it was the girl Grip 
and her Mistress that worked off 
the Spy and Traitor between them. 
Not that Mother Drum would have 
needed any asssistance' in the mere 
doing of the thing. She was a Mut- 
ton-fisted woman, and as strong in the 
forearm as a Bridewell correctioner. 

Oh, the dreary journey we made 
that morning to Aylesbury ! The 
Men Blacks were tied back to back, 
and thrown into such carts as could be 
pressed into the service from the farm- 
steads on the skirts of the Chase. 
One of the constables must needs 
offer, the Scoundrel, to take horse and 
go borrow a cartload of fetters from 
the gaoler at Reading ; but he was 
overruled, and Ropes were thought 
strong enough to confine us. There 
was no chance, alas, of any rescue; 
for those of our comrades who had 
been fortunate enough through absence 
to avoid capture, had doubtless by this 
time scent of the Soldiers, and there 
was no kicking against those bright 
Firelocks and Bayonets. Yet had 
there been another escape. Cicely 
Grip and Mother Drum were taken, 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


but the pretty Maid I loved so for her 
kindness to me when I was Forlorn, 
had shown a clean pair of heels, and 
was nowhere to be found. Good luck 
to her, I thought. Perchance she has 
met with Captain Night, and they are 
Safe and Sound by this time, and off 
to Foreign Parts. For in all this I 
declare I saw nothing Wrong, and 
held, in my baby logic, that we Blacks 
had all been very harshly entreated by 
the Constables and Redcoats, and that 
it was a shame to use us so. Mother 
Drum, the Wench, and my poor 
wounded Self, were put into one cart 
together, and through Humanity, a 
Sergeant (for the Constables would 
not have done it) bade his men litter 
down some straw for us to lie upon. 
There was a ragged Tilt too over the 
cart; and thinks I, in a Gruesome 
manner, “ The first time you rode on 
straw under a Tilt, Jack, you were 
going to school, and now, ’ifegs, you 
are going to be Hanged.” For it was 
settled on all sides, and even he with 
the Charitable Countenance came to 
be of that mind at last, that my fate 
was to die by the Cord. 

“Why,” says one, “you’ve half- 
brained Corporal Foss with the Demi- 
john ; never did liquor get into a 
pretty man’s head so soon and so 
deep. They’ll stretch your neck for 
this, my poult, — they will.” 

The Sergeant interposing, said that 
perhaps, if interest were made for 
me, I might be spared an Indictment, 
and let to go and serve the King as a 
Drummer till I was old enough to 
carry a firelock. But at this the sol- 
diers shook their heads; for Captain 
Poppingjay, their officer, was, it seems, 
still in a towering rage at having had 
his fine-lady’s hand so wofully mauled 
by Captain Night, and vowed venge- 
ance against the whole crew of poach- 
ers and their whelp, as he must needs 
be Polite enough to call me. 

This Fine Gentleman had been pro- 
vided with a Horse by the Sheriff, 
and, as he rode by the cart where I 
and Drum and the Girl were jogging 
on, he spies me under the Tilt, and in 

5 65 


his cruel manner makes a cut at me 
with his riding wand, calling me a 
young spawn of Thievery and Rebel- 
lion. 

“You coward,” I cried in a pas- 
sion ; “ you daren’t do that if my 
hands were loose, and I hadn’t this 
baggonet-wound in me.” 

“ Shame to hit the boy,” growled 
the charitable Constable, who was on 
horseback too. 

The Soldier-officer turned round 
quickly to see who had spoken ; but 
the Sergeant, who watched him, point- 
ed with his halbert to the Constable, 
and he returned the Captain’s glance 
with a sturdy mien. So my Fine 
Gentleman reins in his beast and lets 
us pass, eyeing his hand, which was 
all wrapped up in Bandages, and 
muttering that it was well none of his 
own fellows had given him this sauci- 
ness. 

The day was a dreadful one. IIow 
many times our train halted to bait I 
know not ; but this I know, that I 
fainted often from Agony of my wound 
and the uneasy motion of my carriage. 
It is a wonder that I ever came to my 
journey’s end alive, and in all likeli- 
hood never should, but for the unceas- 
ing care and solicitude of the two poor 
women who were with me, Prisoners 
like myself, but full of merciful kind- 
ness for one who was in a sorer strait 
than they. By earnest pleading did 
Mother Drum persuade the Head Con- 
stable — who, the nearer we got, to 
gaol the more authority he took, and 
the less he seemed to think of our 
soldier escort — to allow her hands to 
be unbound that she might minister 
unto me ; and also did she obtain so 
much grace as for some of the Money- 
belonging unto her, and which hafl 
been seized at the Stag o’ Tyne, to be 
spent in buying of a bottle of brandy 
at one of our halting-places, with 
which she not only comforted herself 
and her afflicted Maid, but, mingling 
it with water, cooled my parched 
tongue and bathed my forehead. 

Brandy was the only medicament 
this good soul knew ; and more lives, 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


she averred, had been saved by Right 
Nantz than lost by bad B. W. ; but 
still brandy was not precisely the kind 
of physic to give a Patient who before 
Sundown was in a Raging Fever. 
But ’twas all one to the Law : and 
coming at last to my journey’s end, 
we were all, the wounded and the 
whole, flung into Gaol to answer for 
it at the ’Sizes. 

Chapter the Ninth. 

I AM VERY NEAR BEING HANGED. 

Our prison was surely the most 
loathsome hole that Human beings 
were ever immured in. It was a 
Horrible and Shameful Place, conspi- 
cuous for such even in those days, 
when every prison was a place of 
Horror and Shame. ’Twas one of 
the King’s Prisons, — one of His Maj- 
esty’s Gaols, — the county had nothing 
to do with it ; and the Keeper thereof 
was a Woman. Say a Tigress rather; 
but Mrs. Macphilader wore a hoop 
and lappets and gold ear-rings, and 
was dubbed “ Madam ” by her Under- 
lings. Here you might at any time 
have seen poor Wretches chained to 
the floor of reeking dungeons, their 
arms, legs, necks even, laden with 
irons, themselves abused, beaten, jeer- 
ed at, drenched with pailfuls of foul 
water, and more than three-quarter 
starved, merely for not being able to 
pay Garnish to the Gaoleress, or com- 
ply with other her exorbitant demands. 
Fetters, indeed, were common and 
Fashionable Wear in the Gaol. ’Twas 
pleaded that the walls of the prison 
were so rotten through age, and the 
means of guarding the prisoners — for 
they could not be always calling in 
the Grenadiers — so limited, that they 
must needs put the poor creatures in 
the bilboes, or run the chance of their 
escaping every day in the week. Thus 
it came to pass, even, that they were 
tried in Fetters, and sometimes could 
not hold up their hands (weakened 
besides by the Gaol Distemper), at 
the bidding of the Clerk of the Ar- 
raigns, for the weight of the Manacles 


that were upon them. And it is to 
the famous and admirable Mr. John 
Howard that we owe the putting down 
of this last Abomination. 

We lay so long in this dreadful 
place before a Gaol Delivery was 
made, that my wound, bad as it was, 
had ample time to heal, leaving only 
a great indented cicatrix, as though 
some Giant had forced his finger into 
my flesh, and of which I shall never 
be rid. Two more of our Gang died 
of the Gaol Fever before Assize time ; 
one was so fortunate as to break prison, 
file the irous off his legs, and get clear 
away ; and another (who was always 
of a Melahcholy turn) hanged himself 
one morning, in a halter made from 
strips of his blanket knotted together. 
The rest of us were knocked about by 
the Turnkeys, or abused by the Gaol- 
eress, Mrs. Macphilader, pretty much 
as they liked. We were, however, 
not so badly off as some of the poor 
prisoners — sheep-stealers, footpads, 
vagrom men and women, and the 
like, or even as some of the poor 
Debtors — many of whom lay here 
incarcerate years after they had dis- 
charged the Demands of their Credi- 
tors against them, and only because 
they could not pay their Fees. We 
Blacks Avere always well supplied 
with money ; and money could pur- 
chase almost anything in a prison in 
those days. Roast meats, and wine 
and beer and punch, pipes and tobacco, 
and playing cards and song-books, — 
all these were to be had by Gentlemen 
Prisoners ; the Gaoleress taking a 
heavy toll, and making a mighty 
profit from all these luxurious things. 
But there was one thing that money 
could not buy, namely, cleanly lodg- 
ing ; for the State Room, a hole of a 
place, very meanly furnished, where 
your great Smugglers or ruffling 
Highwaymen were sometimes lodged, 
at a guinea a day for their accommo- 
dation, was only so much better from 
the common room in so far as the 
prisoner had bed and board to himself; 
but for nastiness and creeping things 
— which I wonder, so numerous were 

66 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


they, did not crawl away with the 
whole prison bodily : but ’tis hard to 
find those that are unanimous, even 
vermin. For all that made the Gaol 
most thoroughly hateful and dreadful, 
there was not a pin to choose between 
the State Room, the Common Side, 
and the Rat’s Larder, Clink, or Dark 
Dungeon, where the Poor were confined 
in wantonness, and the Stubborn were 
kept sometimes for punishment; for 
Madam Gaoleress had a will of her 
own, and would brook no incivilities 
from her Lodgers ; so sure is it, that 
falling out one day on the disputed 
Question of a bottle of Aquavitae on 
which toll had not been paid, she calls 
one of the Turnkeys and bids him 
clap Mother Drum into the Stocks 
(that stood in the Prison Yard) for 
an hour or two, for the cooling of her 
temper. But this had just the con- 
trary effect; for the whilom Hostess 
of the Stag o’ Tyne, enraged at the 
Indignity offered to her, did so bemaul 
and bewray Madam Macpliilader with 
her tongue, shaking her fist at her 
meanwhile, that the Gaoleress in a 
fury clawed at least two handfuls of 
M. Drum’s hair from her head, not 
without getting some smart clapper- 
clawing in the face : whereupon she 
cries out “ Murther ” and “Mutiny” 
and “ Prisonrupt,” and sends post- 
haste for Justice Palm worm, her gos- 
sip indeed, and one of those trading 
magistrates that so disgraced our 
bench before Mr. Henry Fielding the 
writer stirred up Authority to put some 
order therein. The Justice comes ; 
and lie and the Gaoleress, after crack- 
ing a bottle of mulled port between 
them, poor Mother Drum was brought 
up before his Worship for mutinous 
conduct. The Justice would willing- 
ly have compounded the case, for 
Lucre was his only love; but ’twas 
vengeance the Gaoleress hankered 
after ; and the end of it was that poor 
Mother Drum was triced up at the 
post that was by the Stocks, and had 
a dozen and a half from a cat with 
indeed but three tails, but that, 1 war- 
rant, hurt pretty nigh as sharply as 


nine would have done in weaker 
hands ; for ’twas the Gaoler that 
played the Beadle and laid on the 
Scourge. 

At length, when I was quite tired 
out, and, knowing nothing of the 
course of Law, began to think that 
we were doomed to perpetual Impris- 
onment, His Majesty’s Judges of As- 
size came upon their circuit, and those 
whom the Fever and Want and the 
Duresse of their Keeper had spared, 
were put upon their trial. By this 
time I was thought well enough, 
though as gaunt as a Hound, to be 
put in the same Gaol-bird’s trim as 
my companions ; so a pair of Woman’s 
fetters — ay, my friends, the Women 
wore fetters in those days — were put 
upon me ; and the whole of us, all 
shackled as we were, found ourselves, 
one fine Monday morning, in the 
Dock, having been driven thereinto 
very much after the fashion of a flock 
of sheep. The Court was crowded, 
for the case against the Blacks had 
made a prodigious stir ; and the 
King’s Attorney, the most furious 
Person for talking a Fellow-creature’s 
Life away that ever I remember to 
have seen or heard, came down espe- 
cially from London to prosecute us. 
Neither he nor His Lordship the 
Judge, in his charge to the Grand 
Jury, had any but the worst of words 
to give us ; and folks began to say 
that this would be another Bloody 
Assize ; that the Shire Hall had need 
to be hung with scarlet, as when Jef- 
freys was on the bench ; and that as 
short work would be made of us as 
of the Rebels in the West. And I 
did not much care, for I was sick of 
lying in hold, amidst Evil Odours, and 
with a green wound. It came even 
to whispering that one of us at least 
would be made a Gibbeting-in-chains 
matter for killing the Grenadier, if 
that Act could be fixed on any partic- 
ular Black. And half in jest, half 
in earnest, the Woman-keeper told me 
on the morning of the Assizes that, 
young as I was (not yet twelve years 
of age), my bones might rattle in a 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


bird-cage in the midst of Charlwood 
Chase ; for if I could brain one Gren- 
adier, I could kill another. But yet, 
being so weary of the Life, I did not 
much Care. 

It was still somewhat of a Relief to 
me to come into the Dock, and look 
upon State and Rich Clothes (in which 
I have always taken a Gentleman- 
like pleasure), in the stead of all the 
dirt and squalor which for so long 
had been my surrounding. There 
were the Judges all ranged, a Terri- 
ble show, in their brave Scarlet Robes 
and Fur Tippets, with Great Mon- 
strous Wigs, and the King’s Arms be- 
hind them under a Canopy, done in 
Carver’s work, gilt. They frowned 
on us dreadfully when we came troop- 
ing into the Dock, bringing all man- 
ner of Deadly pestilential Fumes with 
us from the Gaol yonder, and which 
not all the rue, rosemary, and marjo- 
ram strewn on the Dock-ledge, nor the 
hot vinegar sprinkled about the Court, 
could mitigate. The middle Judge, 
who was old, and had a split lip and 
a fang protruding from it, shook his 
head at me, and put on such an Awful 
face, that for a moment my scared 
thoughts went back to the Clergyman 
at St. George’s, Hanover Square, that 
was wont to be so angry with me in 
his Sermons. Ah, how different was 
the lamentable Hole in the which I 
now found myself, cheek by jowl with 
Felons and Cara vats, to the great red- 
baize Pew in which I had sat so often 
a Little Gentleman ! He to the right 
of the middle Judge was a very 
sleepy gentleman, and scarcely ever 
woke up during the proceedings, save 
once towards one of the clock, when 
he turned to his Lordship (whom I had 
at once set down as Mr. Justice Black- 
cap, and was in truth that Dread 
Functionary), saving, “Brother, is 
it dinner-time?” But his Lordship 
to the left, who had an old white face 
like a sheep, and his wig all awry, 
was of a more placable demeanor, and 
looked at me, poor luckless Outcast, 
with some interest. I saw him turn 
his head and whisper to the gentle- 


man they told me was the High Sher- 
iff, and who sat on the Bench, along- 
side the Judges, very fine, in a robe 
and gold chain, and with a great 
sheathed sword behind him, resting 
on a silver goblet. Then the High 
Sheriff took to reading over the Calen- 
dar, and shrugged his shoulders, 
whereupon I indulged in some hope. 
Then he leans over to Mr. Clerk of 
the Arraigns, pointing me out, and 
seemingly asking him some question 
about me ; but that gentleman hands 
him up a couple of parchments, and 
my quick Ear (for the Court was but 
small) caught the words, “ There are 
two Indictments against him, Sir 
John.” Whereupon they looked at 
me no more, save with a Stern and 
Sorrowful Gravity ; and the hope I 
had nourished for a moment departed 
from me. Yet then, as afterwards, 
and as now, I found (although then 
too babyish to reason about it), that, 
bad as we say the World is, it is diffi- 
cult to come upon Three Men together 
in it but that one is Good and Merciful. 

I feel that my disclaimer notwith- 
standing the Bark of my Narrative is 
running down the stream of a Garru- 
lous talkativeness ; but I shall be 
more brief anon. And what would 
you have ? If there be any circum- 
stances which should entitle a man to 
give chapter and verse, they must 
surely be those under which he was 
Tried for his Life. 

The first day we only held up our 
hands, and heard the Indictment 
against us read. Some of us who 
were Moneyed had retained Counsel- 
lors from London to cross-question the 
witnesses; for to speak to the Jury in 
aid of Prisoners, who could not often 
speak for themselves, the Gentlemen 
of the Law wore not then permitted. 
And this I have ever held to be a cry- 
ing Injustice. There was no one, 
however, not so much as a Pettifogger, 
to lift tongue, or pen, or finger, to 
save little Jack Dangerous from the 
Rope. My Protector, Captain Night, 
was at large ; Jowler, my first friend 
among the Blacks, was dead; and, as 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


Misery is apt to make men Selfish, 
the rest of my companions had en- 
tirely forgotten how friendless and 
deserted I was. But, just as we were 
going back to Gaol, up comes to the 
spikes of the Dock a Gentleman with 
a red face, and a vast bushy powdered 
wig, like a cauliflower in curls. He 
wore a silk cassock and sash, and was 
the Ordinary ; but he had forgotten, 
I think, to come into the Prison and 
read prayers to us. He kept those 
ministrations against such time as the 
Cart was ready, and the Tree decked 
with its hempen garland. This gen- 
tleman beckons me, and asks if I 
have any Counsellor. I told him, No ; 
and that I had no Friends ayont 
Mother Drum, and she was laid up, 
sick of a pair of sore shoulders. He 
goes back to the Bench and confers 
with the Gentlemen, and by and by 
the Clerk of the Arraigns calls out 
that, through the Humanity of the 
Sheriff, the prisoner John Dangerous 
was to have Counsel Assigned to him. 
But it would have been more Humane, 
I think, to have let the Court and the 
World know that I was a poor ne- 
glected Castaway, knowing scarcely 
iiiy right Hand from my left, and that 
all I had done had been in that 
Blindfoldedness of Ignorance which 
can scarcely, I trust, be called Sin. 

Back, however, we went to Gaol, 
and a great Rout there was made that 
night by Mrs. Macphilader for the 
payment of all arrears of Fees and 
Garnish to her ; for, you see, being a 
prudent Woman, she feared lest some 
of the prisoners should be Acquitted, 
or Discharged on Proclamation. And 
our Gang of Blacks, for whose aid 
their friends in ambush — and they 
had friends in all kinds of holes and 
corners, as I afterwards discovered to 
my surprise — had most bountifully 
come forward, did not trouble them- 
selves much about the peril they were 
in, but bestowed themselves of making 
a Roaring Fight. And hindered by 
none in Authority, — for the Gaolers 
and Turnkeys in those days were not 
above drinking, and smoking, and 


singing, and dicing with their charges 
— they did keep it up so merrily and 
so roaringly, that the best part of the 
night was spent before drowsiness 
came over Aylesbury Gaol. 

Then the next day to Court, and 
there the Judges as before, and Sir 
John, the High Sheriff, and the Coun- 
sel for the Crown and for us, and 
twelve honest gentlemen iu a box by 
themselves, that were of the Petty 
Jury, to try us ; and, I am ashamed 
to say, a great store of Ladies, all in 
ribbons and patches and laces and 
fine clothes, that sate some on the 
Bench beside the Judges, and others 
in the body of the Court among the 
Counsel, and stared at us miserable 
objects in the Dock as though we had 
been a Galantee Show. It is some 
years now since I have entered a 
Court of Criminal Justice, and I do 
hope that this Indecent and Uncivil Be- 
haviour of well-bred Women coming to 
gaze on Criminals for their diversion 
has utterly given way before the Ben- 
evolence and good taste of a polite Age. 

When, at the last, I was told to 
plead, and at the bidding of an Officer 
of the Court, who stood underneath 
me, had pleaded Not Guilty, and had 
been asked how I would be tried, and 
had answered, likewise at his bidding, 
“By God and my Country,” and when 
after that the Clerk of the Arraigns 
had prayed Heaven — and I am sure 
I needed it, and thanked him heartily 
at the time, kind Gentleman, thinking 
that he meant it, and not knowing 
that it was a mere Legal Form — to 
send me a good Deliverance, — the 
Judge bids me, to my great surprise, 
to Stand by. I thought at first that 
they were going to have Mercy on 
me, and would have down on my knees 
in gratitude to them. But it was not 
so ; and the sleepy old Judge, sud- 
denly waking up, told me that there 
were two Indictments against me, and 
that I should have the honor of being 
tried separately. Goodness save us ! 
I was looked upon as one of the most 
desperate of the Gang, and was to be 
tried, not only under the Black Act, 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


but that, not having the fear of God 
before my eyes, but being moved by 
the instigation of the Devil, I had, 
against the Peace of our Sovereign 
.Lord the King, attempted feloniously 
to kill, slay, and murder one John 
Foss, a Corporal in His Majesty’s 
Regiment of Grenadier Footguards, 
by striking him, the said John Foss, 
over the back, breast, hips, loins, 
shoulders, thighs, legs, feet, arms, and 
fingers, with a certain deadly weapon, 
to wit, with a demijohn of Brandy. 

I was put back and kept all day in the 
prison. At evening came in my com- 
rades, and from them I learnt that the 
case had gone dead against them from 
the beginning, that the Jury had found 
them guilty under the Statute without 
leaving the box ; and that, as the 
felony was one without the benefit of 
Clergy, Judge Blackcap had put on a 
wig as black as his name, and sen- 
tenced every man Jack of them to be 
hanged on the Monday week next fol- 
lowing. 

So then it came to my turn to be 
tried. The ordeal on the first Indict- 
ment was very short ; for, at the Judge’s 
bidding, the Jury acquitted me of try- 
ing to murder Corporal Foss before I 
had been ten minutes in the dock. I 
did not understand the proceedings in 
the least at that time ; but I was told 
afterwards that the clever legal gen- 
tleman who had drawn up the Indict- 
ment against me, while very particu- 
larly setting down the parts of the 
body on which I might have struck 
Corporal Foss, omitted to specify the 
one place, namely, his head, on which 
I did hit him. Counsel for the Crown 
endeavored, indeed, to prove that a 
spliuter from the broken demijohn had 
grazed the corporal’s finger, but the 
evidence for this fell dead. And, 
again, it coming out that I was ar- 
raigned as John Danger, whereas I 
had given the name of John Danger- 
ous, to which I had perhaps no more 
right than to that of the Pope of Rome, 
the Judge roundly tells the Jury that 
the Indictment is bad in law, and I 
was forthwith acquitted as aforesaid. 


But I was not scot-free. There was 
that other Indictment under the Black 
Act ; and in that, alas, there was no 
flaw. The Solemn Court freed itself, 
to be sure, of the Mockery of finding 
a child under twelve years Guilty of 
the attempted murder of a Grenadier 
six feet high ; but no less did the wit- 
nesses swear, and the Judge sum up, 
and Counsel for the Crown insist, and 
my Counsel feebly deny, and the Jury 
at last fatally find against me, that I 
had gone about armed and Disguised 
by night, and wandered up and down 
in the King’s Forests, and stolen his 
Deer, and Goodness can tell what 
besides ; and so, being found guilty, 
the middle Judge puts on his black 
cap again, and tells me that I am to 
be hanged on Monday week by the 
neck. 

He did not say anything about my 
youth, or about my utter loneliness, or 
about the evil examples which had 
brought me to this Pass. Perhaps it 
was not his Duty, but that of the Or- 
dinary, to tell me so. The Hanging 
was his department, the praying be- 
longed to his Reverence. They led 
me back to prison, feeling rather hot 
and sick after the words I had listened 
to about being M hanged by the neck 
until I was dead,” but still not caring 
much ; for I could not rightly under- 
stand why all these fine gentlemen 
should be at the pains of Butchering 
me merely because I had run away 
from school (being so cruelly entreated 
by Gnawbit), and, to save myself 
from starvation, had joined the Blacks. 

Being to Die, it seemed for the first 
time to occur to them that I was not 
as the rest of the poor souls that were 
doomed to death, and that it behoved 
them to treat me rather as a lamb 
that is doomed for the slaughter than 
as a great overgrown Bullock to be 
knocked down by the Butcher’s Pole- 
axe. So they put me away from the 
rest of my companions, and bestowed 
me in a sorry little chamber, where I 
had a truckle-bed to myself. Dear old 
Mother Drum, being still under dis- 
grace, was not suffered to come near 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


me. Her trial, with that of Cicely 
Grip, for harboring armed and dis- 
guised men, under the Black Act, 
which was likewise a felony, was not 
to come on till the next session. I 
believe that the Great Gentlemen at 
Whitehall, were, for a long time after 
my conviction, in a mind for Hanging 
me. ’Twas thought a small matter 
then to stretch the neck of a Boy 
of Twelve, and children even smaller 
than I had worn the white Nightcap, 
and smelt the Nosegay in the Cart. 
Indeed, I think the Ordinary wanted 
me to be Finished according to Law, 
that he might preach a Sermon on 
it, and liken me to one of the Chil- 
dren that mocked the Prophet, and 
was so eaten up by the She-Bears 
that came out of a Wood. When I 
think on the Reverend and Pious 
Persons who now attend our Criminals 
in their last unhappy Moments, and 
strive to bring them to a Sense of their 
Sins, it gives me the Goose-flesh to 
remember the Profane and Riotous 
Parsons who, for a Mean Stipend, did 
the contemned work of Gaol Chap- 
lains in the days I speak of. Even 
while the Hangman was getting into 
proper Trim, and fashioning his tools 
for the slaughter, these callous Cler- 
gymen would be smoking and drink- 
ing with the keepers in the Lodge, 
talking now of a Main at Cocks, 
and now of him who was to suffer 
on the Morrow, fleering and jesting, 
with the Church Service in one sleeve 
of their cassock and a Bottle Screw 
or a Pack of Cards in the other. 
And the condemned persons, too, did 
not take the matter in a much more 
serious light. They had their Brandy 
and Tobacco even in their Dismal 
Hold, and thought much less of Mer- 
cy and Forgiveness than of the ease 
they would have from their Irons 
being stricken off, or the comfort they 
would gain from a last bellyful of 
Meat. I have not come to be sixty- 
eight years of age without observing 
somewhat of the Things that have 
passed around me ; and one of the 
best signs of the Times in which I 


live (and due in great part to the 
Humane and Benignant complexion 
of his Majesty) is the falling off in 
bloodthirsty and cruel Punishments. 
If a Dozen or so are hanged after each 
Gaol Delivery at the Old Bailey, and 
a score or more whipped or burnt in 
the Hand, what are such workings of 
justice compared with the Waste of 
Life that was used to be practised un- 
der the two last monarchs? At home 
’twas all pressing to death those who 
would not plead, hanging, drawing, 
and quartering (how often have I 
sickened to see the pitch-seethed mem- 
bers of my Fellow-creatures on the 
spikes of Temple Bar and London 
Bridge!), taking out the entrails of 
those convict of Treason (as witness 
Colonel Towneley, Mr. Dawson, and 
many more unfortunate gentlemen on 
Kennington Common) , to say nothing 
of the burning alive of women for petty 
treason, — and to kill a husband or 
coin a groat were alike Treasonable, 
— the Scourging of the same wretched 
creatures in Public till the blood ran 
from their shoulders and soaked the 
knots of the Beadle’s lash; the cart- 
ings, brandings, and dolorous Impris- 
onments which were then inflicted for 
the slightest of offences. Why, I have 
seen a man stand in the Pillory in the 
Seven Dials (to be certain, he was a 
secure scoundrel), and the Mob, not 
satisfied, must take him out, strip him 
to the buff, stone him, cast him down, 
root up the pillory, and trample him 
under foot, till, being Rescued by the 
constables, he has been taken back to 
Newgate, and has died in the Hackney 
Coach conveying him thither. Oh, 
’tis woe to think of the Horrors that 
were then done in the name of the Law 
and Justice, not only in this country 
but in Foreign Parts, — with their 
Breakings on the Wheel, Questions 
Ordinary and Extraordinary, Bastina- 
does, Carcans, W ooden horses, Burn- 
ing alive too (for vending of Irreligious 
Books), and the like Barbarities. Let 
me tell you likewise, that, for all the 
evil name gotten by the Spanish and 
Portuguese Inquisitions, — for which I 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


entertain, as a Protestant, due Detes- 
tation and Abhorrence, — the darkest 
deeds ever done by the so-called Holy 
Office in their Torture Chambers were 
not half so cruel as those performed 
with the full cognisance and approba- 
tion of authority, in open places, and 
in pursuance of the sentence of the Civil 
Judges. But a term has come to these 
wickednesses. The admirable Mr. 
Howard before named (whom I have 
often met in my travels, as he, good 
man, with nothing but a Biscuit and 
a few Raisins in his pocket, went up 
and down Europe Doing Good, smil- 
ing at Fever and tapping Pestilence 
on the cheek), — this Blessed Worthy 
has lightened the captive’s fetters, and 
cleansed his dungeon, and given him 
Light and Air. Then I hear at the 
Coffee House that the great Judge, 
Sir William Blackstone, has given his 
caveat against the Frequency of Capi- 
tal Punishment for small offences ; 
and as His Majesty is notoriously 
averse from signing more than six 
Death W arrants at once (the old King 
used to say at council, in his Ger- 
man English, u Vere is de Dyin’ speech 
man dat hang de Rogue for me ? ” 
meaning the Recorder with his Re- 
port, and seeming, in a sort, eager to 
despatch that awful Business, of which 
the present Prince is so Tender), I 
think that we have every cause to Bless 
the Times and Reign we live in. For 
surely ’tis but affected Softness of 
Heart, and Mock, Sickly Sentiment, 
to maintain that Highwaymen, Horse- 
stealers, and other hardened villains, 
do not deserve the Tree, and do not 
righteously Suffer for their misdeeds ; 
or that wanton women do not deserve 
bodily correction, so long as it be 
done within Bridewell Walls, and not 
in front of the Sessions House, for the 
ribald Populace to stare at. Truly 
our present code is a merciful one, 
although I do not hold that the Ex- 
treme Penalty of the law should be 
exacted for such offences as cutting 
down growing trees, forging hat- 
stamps, or stealing above the value 


of a shilling ; nevertheless, crime must 
be kept under, that is certain. 

At all events they didn’t hang John 
Dangerous. For a time, as I have 
said, the Great Gentlemen at White- 
hall hesitated. I have heard that J us- 
tice Blackcap, being asked to intercede 
for me, did, with a scurril jest, tell 
Mr. Secretary that I was a young Imp 
of the Evil one, and that a little Hang- 
ing would do me no harm. Five, in- 
deed, of my miserable companions 
were put to death, at different points 
on the borders of Charlwood Chase, 
and one, the unlucky Chaplain, met 
his fate before the door of the Stag o’ 
Tyne. The rest of the Blacks, of 
whom, to my joy, I shall have no fur- 
ther occasion to speak, were sent to be 
Slaves in the American Plantations. 

I had lain in the Gaol more than a 
month after my Sentence, when Mr. 
Shapcott, a good Quaker Gentleman 
of the place (who had suffered much 
for Conscience’ sake, and was very 
Pitifully inclined to all those who were 
in Affliction), began to take some in- 
terest in my unhappy Self ; calling me 
a strayed lamb, a brand to be snatched 
from the burning, and the like. And 
he, by the humane connivance of the 
Mayor and other Justices, was now 
permitted to have access unto me, and 
to conciliate the Keeper, Mrs. Mac- 
philader, by money-presents, to treat 
me with some kindness. Also he 
brought me many Good Books, in 
thin paper covers ; the which, although 
I could understand but very little of 
their Saving Truths, yet caused me to 
shed many Tears, more Sweet than 
Bitter, and to acknowledge, when 
taxed with it in a Soothing way, that 
my former Manner of Life had been 
most Wicked. But I should do this good 
man foul injustice, were I to let it stand 
that his benevolence to me was con- 
fined to books. He and (ever remem- 
bered) Mistress Shapcott, his Meek 
and Pious Partner, and his daughter, 
Wingrace Shapcott (a tall and straight 
young woman, as Beautiful as an An- 
gel), were continually bringing me 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


Comforts and Needments, both in 
Raiment and Food. It churns my 
Old Heart now to think of that Beauti- 
ful Girl, sitting beside me in my dank 
Prison Room, the tears streaming 
from her mild eyes, calling me by 
Endearing names, and ever and anon 
taking my hand in hers, and sinking 
on her knees to the sodden floor (with 
no thought of soiling her kirtle) , while 
with profound Fervor she prayed for 
the conversion of arrant Me. Sure 
there are Hearts of Gold among those 
Broadbrims and their fair straight- 
laced Daughters. Many a Merchant’s 
Money-bag3 I have spared for the 
sake of Mr. Barzillai Shapcott (late 
of Aylesbury). Many a Fair Woman 
have I intermitted from my Furious 
Will in remembrance of the good 
that was shown me, in the old time, 
by that pale, straight-gowned Win- 
grace yonder, with her meek Face 
and welling Eyes. Of my deep and 
grievous Sins they told me enow, but 
they forbore to Terrify me with Fright- 
ful Images of Unforgiving Wrath ; 
speaking to me of F orgivcness alway, 
rather than of Torment. And once, 
when I had gotten, through favor of 
the Keeper, Mr. Dredlincourt his book 
on Death (and had half frightened my- 
self into fits by reading the apparition 
of Mrs. Veal), these good people must 
needs take it from me, telling me that 
such strong meat was not fit for Babes, 
and gave me in its place a pretty lit- 
tle chap-book, called “Joy for Friend- 
ly Friends.” But that I am old and 
battered, and black as a Guinea Ne- 
gro with sins, I Avould go join the 
Quakers now. Never mind their 
broad-brims, and theeing and thou- 
iug. I tell you, man, that they have 
hearts as soft as toast-and-butter, and 
that they do more good in a day than 
my Lord Bishop (with his coach- 
horses, forsooth !) does in a year. 
And oh, the pleasure of devalising one 
of these Proud Prelates, as I — that 
is, some of my Friends — have done 
scores of times ! 

Nothing would suit the good Shap- 
cotts but that I should write in mine 


own hand a Petition to the King’s 
Majesty. The Magistrates, who now 
began to take some interest in me, were 
for having it drawn up by their Town 
Clerk, and me only to put my Mark 
to it ; for they would not give a poor 
little Hangdog of a Black any credit 
of Clergy. But being told that I 
could both read and write, after a 
Fashion, it was agreed that I was to 
have myself the scrivening of the Doc- 
ument ; they giving me some Forms 
and Hints for beginning and ending, 
and bidding me con my Bible, and 
choose such texts as I thought bore 
on my Unhappy Condition. And 
after Great Endeavours and many 
painful days, and calling all my little 
Scholarship under my Grandmother, 
the kind old school-mistress of Fou- 
bert’s Passage, Gnawbit (burn him !), 
and Captain Night, I succeeded in 
producing the following. I give it 
word for word as I wrote it, having 
kept a copy ; but I need not say that, 
as a Gentleman of Fortune, my Style 
and Spelling are not now so Barbar- 
ous and Uncouth. 

This was my Petition to His Maj- 
esty : 

“ The Humble Pettyshon of Jon Dan- 
gerous now a prisinner under cen- 
tense off Deth in His Maggesty’s 
Gayle at Alesbury to His Maggesty 
Gorge by the grease of God King of 
Grate Briton Frans and Eyearland 
Defender off the Fathe Showeth That 
yore Petetioner which I am Unfor- 
tunate cnuff to be mixed up in this 
business Me and the others wicli 
have suffered was Cast by the Jewry 
and Justis Blackcapp he ses that 
as a Warming and Eggsample i am 
to be Hanged by the Nek till you 
are Ded and the Lord have Mercy 
upon his Soul Great Sur your Mag- 
gesty the Book ses that wen the 
wicked man turneth away from his 
Wickedness wicli he have com- 
mitted and doctli that wich is Law- 
ful and Rite he shall save his Sole 
alive. Therefore deer Great Sur 
wich a repreive would fall like 


The Strange Adventures 

Thunder upon a Contrite Hart and 
am most sorrowful under the Black 
Act wich it is true I took the deere 
but was led to it Deere Sur wich 
Mungo and others was repreeved at 
the Tree and sent to the Plantations 
but am not twelve yeeres old And 
have always been a Prottestant 
Great Sur i shall be happy to serve 
his Maggesty by see or land and if 
the Granny deere he had not Vexed 
me but had no other way being in a 
Korner and all Fiting and so i up 
with the demmyjon which i lioap he 
is better And your Petishioner will 
ever pray your Maggesty’s loving 
Subject and Servant 

Jon Dangerous 

My Granmother was a Lady of 
Quality and lived in her own House 
in Hannover Squair and was used 
after her Deth very cruelly by one 
Mistress Tallmash and Kadwallader 
which was the Stoard and was sent 
in a W aggin like a Beggar Deere 
Sur Mr. Gnawbit he used me shame- 
ful wich I was Blak and Blue and 
the Old Gentleman he ses you Run 
away ses he into Charwood chaise 
and join the Blacks Deere Sur this 
is All which Captain Nite would 
swear but as eloped I am now lying 
here many weekes Deere Sur I 
shood like to be hanged in Wite for 
I am Innocent leastways of meaning 
to kill the Grannydeere.” 

This was a Curious kind of School- 
boy letter. Different I take it from 
those one gets from a Brother, ask- 
ing for a Crown, a Pony, or a Plum- 
cake. But my Schools had been of 
the hardest, and this was my Holiday 
letter. 

When the Mayor read it he burst 
out a-laughing, and says that no such 
Thieves’ Flash must be sent to the 
Foot of the Throne. But Mr. Shap- 
cott told him that he would not have 
one word altered ; that he would not 
eveu strike out the paragraph where 
I had been Irreverent enough to quote 
a Text (and spell it badly) ; and that 
what I had written, and naught else, 


of Captain Dangerous. 

should go to the King. lie took it 
to London himself, and His Majesty 
being much elated by some successes 
in Germany, and the Discovery of a 
Jacobite Plot, and moved moreover 
by the intercession of a Foreign Lady, 
that was his Favorite, and who vowed 
that the little Deer-Stealer’s Petition 
was Monstrous Droll, and almost as 
good as a Play, — His Majesty was 
graciously pleased to remit my Sen- 
tence, on condition of my transporting 
myself for life to His Majesty’s Plan- 
tations in North America. 

As to my transporting “ myself,” 
that was a Fiction. I was henceforth 
as much a Slave to my own Country- 
men as I was in after days to the 
Moors. The Shapcotts would willing- 
ly have provided me with the means 
of going to the uttermost ends of the 
World, but that was not the way the 
thing was to be done. Flesh and 
Blood were bought aud sold in those 
days, and it did not much matter about 
the color. By that strange Laxity 
which then tempered the severity of the 
Laws, I was permitted, for many days 
after my Fate was settled, to remain 
in a kind of semi-Enlargemeut. I 
suppose that Mr. Shapcott gave bail 
forme ; but I was taken into his Fam- 
ily, and treated with the most Loving 
Kindness, till the fearful intelligence 
came that I, with two hundred other 
Convicts, had been “Taken up” for 
Transportation by Sir Basil Hop wood, 
a rich Merchant and Alderman of 
London, who paid a certain Sum a 
head for us to the King’s Government 
for taking us to America, where he 
might make what profit he pleased, by 
selling our wretched Carcasses to be 
Slaves to the Planters. 

Oh, the terrible Parting ! but there 
was no other Way, and it had to be 
Endured. My kind friends made me 
up a packet of Necessaries for the 
Voyage, and with a Heavy Heart I 
bade them farewell. These good peo- 
ple are all Dead; but their woman- 
servant, Ruth, a pure soul, of great 
Serenity of Countenance, still lives; 
and every Christmas does the Carrier 
convey for me to Aylesbury a Ham- 


The Strange Adventures 

per full of the Good Things of this 
Life, and Ten Golden Guineas. And 
I know that this Good and Faithful 
Servant (who has been well provided 
for) just touches the Kissing-crust of 
one of the Pies my Lilias has made 
for her, and that she goes straight with 
the rest, Money and Cakes, to the 
Gaol, and therewith relieves the Debt- 
ors (whom Heaven deliver out of their 
Captivity ! ). And it is more seemly 
that she rather than I should do this 
thing, seeing that there are those who 
will not believe that after a Hard Life 
a man can keep a fleshy heart, and 
who would be apt to dub me Hypo- 
crite if these Doles came from me 
directly. 

Chapter the Tenth. 

OF SUNDRY MY ADVENTURES FROM THE 

TIME OF MY GOING ABROAD UNTIL 

MY COMING TO MAN’S ESTATE (WHICH 

WAS ALL THE ESTATE I HAD.) 

A strange Nursing-mother — rather 
a Step-mother of the Stoniest sort — 
was this Sir Basil Hopwood, Knight 
and Alderman of London, that con- 
tracted with the Government to take 
us Transports abroad. Sure there 
never was a man, on this side the land 
of Horseleeches, that was so Hungry 
after money. Yet was his avarice 
not of the kind practised by old Aud- 
ley, the money-scrivener of the Com- 
monwealth’s time; or Hopkins, the 
wretch that saved candles’ ends and 
yet had a thousand wax-lights blazing 
at his Funeral ; or Guy the Bookseller, 
that founded the Hospital in South- 
wark; or even old John Elwes, Es- 
quire, the admired Miser of these 
latter days. Sir Basil Hopwood was 
the rather of the same complexion of 
Entrails with that Signor Yolpone 
whom we have all seen — at least such 
of us as be old Boys — in Ben Jon- 
son’s play of the Fox. He Money- 
grubbed, and Money-clutched, and 
Money-wrung, ay, and in a manner 
Money-stole, that he might live largely, 
and ruffle it among his brother Cits in 
surpassing state and splendour. He 
had been Lord Mayor ; and on his 


of Captain Dangerous . 

Show-day the Equipments of chivalry 
had been more Sumptuous, the Ban- 
ners more varied, the Entertainment 
at Saddlers’ Hall, — where the Lord 
Mayor was wont to hold his Feast be- 
fore the present Mansion House was 
built, the ancient Guildhall in King 
Street being then but in an ill condi- 
tion for banquet, — Hop wood’s Enter- 
tainment, I say, had been more plenti- 
fully provided with Marrowbones, 
Custards, Buffs and Beeves, Baked 
Cygnets, Malmsey, Canary, and Hip- 
pocras, than had ever been known 
since the days of Sir Bobert Clayton, 
the Merry Mayor, who swore that 
King Charles the Second should take 
t’other bottle. He was a Parliament 
man, too, and had a Borough in his 
Pocket — more’s the shame — besides 
one to serve him as a cushion to sit on. 

This enormously rich man had a 
fine House in Bishopsgate Street, with 
as many rogues in blue liveries as a 
Botterdam Syndic, that has made 
three good ventures in Java. When 
we poor wretches, chained together, 
had been brought up in Carts from 
Aylesbury to London, on our way to 
be embarked, nothing would serve this 
Haughty and Purse-proud Citizen but 
that our ragged Begiment must halt 
before his peddling Palace ; and there 
the varlets in blue that attended upon 
him brought us out Loaves and Cheese, 
and Blackjacks full of two-thread 
Beer, which, with many disdainful 
gestures and uncivil words, they offer- 
ed to our famished lips. And my 
Lady Hopwood, and the fine Madams 
her daughters, — all laced and fur- 
belowed, and with widows’ and or- 
phans’ tears, and the blood-drops of 
crimped seamen and kidnapped chil- 
dren, twinkling in their Stomachers 
for gems, — were all set at their Bow- 
ery window, a pudding-fed chaplain 
standing bowing and smirking behind 
them, and glozing in their ears no 
doubt Praises of their exceeding 
Charity and Humanity to wretches 
such as we were. But this Charity, 
Jack, says I to myself, is not of the 
Sliapcott sort, and is but cast metal 
after all. My troth, but we wanted 

75 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


the Bread and Cheese and Swipes ; 
for we had had neither Bite nor Sup 
since we left Aylesbury Gaol seven- 
and-twenty hours agone. So, after a 
while, and the mob hallooing at us for 
Gallows-birds, and some Ruffians 
about the South-Sea House pelting us 
with stones, — for Luck, as they said, 
— we were had over London Bridge, 
— where with dreadful admiration I 
viewed the Heads and Quarters of 
Traitors, all shimmering in the coat 
of pitch i’ the Sun, over the North 
Turret, — and were bestowed for the 
night in the Borough Clink. And 
hither we were pursued by the Aider- 
man’s Agents, who straightway began 
to drive Unholy Bargains with those 
among us that had Money. Now 
’twas selling them Necessaries for the 
voyage at exorbitant rates ; or prom- 
ising them, for cash in hand, to deliver 
them Luxuries, such as Tobacco, play- 
ing-cards, and strong waters, at the 
Port of Embarkation. Now ’twas 
substituting Light for Heavy Fetters, 
if the Heaviness could be Assuaged 
by Gold ; and sometimes even nego- 
tiations were carried so far as for the 
convicted persons to give Drafts of 
Exchange, to be honoured by their 
Agents in London, so soon as word 
came from the Plantations that they 
had been placed in Tolerable Servi- 
tude, instead of Agonising Slavery. 
For although there was then, as there 
is now, a convenient Fiction that a 
Felon’s goods became at once forfeit 
to the Crown, I never yet knew a 
Felon (and I have known many) that 
felt ever so little difficulty in keeping 
his property, if he had any, and dis- 
posing of it according to his own Good 
Will and Pleasure. 

The Head Gaoler of the Borough 
Clink — I know not how his Proper 
official title ran — was a colonel in the 
Foot Guards, who lived in Jermyn 
Street, St. James’s, and transacted 
most of his High and Mighty busi- 
ness either at Poingdestre’s Ordinary 
in St. Alban’s Place, or at White’s 
Chocolate House, to say naught of 
the Row, or the Key in Chandos 


Street. Much, truly, did he concern 
himself about his unhappy Captives. 
His Place was a Patent one, and was 
worth to him about Fifteen Hundred 
a year, at which sum it was farmed 
by Sir Basil Hopwood ; who, in his 
turn, on the principle that “ ’tis scurvy 
money that won’t stick to your fin- 
gers,” underlet the place to a company 
of Four Rogues, who gave him Two 
Thousand for it, which they managed 
to swell into at least Three for them- 
selves by squeezing of Poor Prison- 
ers, and the like crying Injustices. 
’Twas Aylesbury Gaol over again, 
with the newest improvements and 
the Humours of the Town . added to 
it. So, when Sir Basil Hopwood took 
up a cargo of cast persons for Trans- 
portation, his underlings of the 
Borough Clink were only too glad 
to harbor them for a night or two, 
making a pretty profit out of the poor 
creatures. For all which, I doubt it 
not, Sir Basil Hopwood and his 
scoundrelly Myrmidons are, at this 
instant moment, Howling. 

This place was a Prison for Debtors 
as well as Criminals, and was to the 
full as Foul as the Tophet-pit at Ayles- 
bury yonder. I had not been there 
half an hour before a Lively compan- 
ion of a Gentleman Cutpurse, with a 
wrench at my kerchief, a twist at my 
arm (which nearly Broke it in twain), 
and a smart Blow under my Lower 
Jaw, robs me of the packet of com- 
forts (clothing, pressed beef, sugar, 
comfits, and the like) which my kind 
friends at Aylesbury had given me. 
The Rascal comes to me a few min- 
utes afterwards with a packet of Soap 
and a Testament, which he had taken 
from my Bundle, and returns them to 
me with a Grin, telling me that it was 
long since his Body had felt need of 
the one or his Soul of the other. And 
yet I think they would have profited 
considerably (pending a Right Cord) 
by the application of Both. So I in 
a corner, to moan and whimper at my 
Distressed condition. 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


Chapter the Tenth — Cont. 

A sad Sunday I spent in the Clink, 
— ’twas on the Monday we were to 
start, — although, to some other of my 
companions, the Time passed jovially 
enough. For very many of the Rela- 
tions and Friends of the Detained 
Persons came to visit them, bringing 
them money, victuals, clothing, and 
other Refreshments. ’Twas on this 
day I heard that one of us, who was 
cast for Forgery, had been offered a 
Free Pardon if he could lodge Five 
Hundred Pounds in the hands of a 
Person who had Great Influence near 
a Great Man. 

Late on the Sunday afternoon, Sir 
Basil Hopwood came down in his 
coach, and with his chaplain attendant 
on him. We Convicts were all had 
to the Grate, for the Knight and Al- 
derman would not venture further in, 
for fear of the Gaol Fever ; and he 
makes us a Fine Speech about the 
King’s Mercy, — which I deny not, — 
and his own Infinite Goodness in pro- 
viding for us in a Foreign Land. The 
which I question. Then he told us 
how we were to be very civil and obe- 
dient on the voyage to those who were 
set over us, refraining from cursing, 
swearing, gaming, or singing of 
profane songs, on pain of immediate 
and smart chastisement; and having 
said this, and the Chaplain having 
given us his Benedietion, he gat him 
gone, and we were rid of so much 
Rapacious and Luxurious Hypocrisy. 
We lay in the yard that night, wrap- 
ped in such extra Garments as some 
of us were Fortunate enough to have ; 
and I sobbed myself to sleep, wishing, 
I well remember, that it might never 
he Day again, but that my Sorrows 


might all be closed in by the Merciful 
Curtain of Eternal Night. 

So on the Monday morning we were 
driven down — a body of Sir Basil 
Hopwood’s own company of the Train- 
bands guarding us — to Shayler’s 
Stairs, near unto the church of St. 
Mary Overy; and there — we were in 
number about a hundred — put on 
board a Hoy, which straightway, the 
tide being toward, bore down the river 
for Gravesend. 

By this time I found that, almost 
insensibly, as it were, I had become 
separated from my old companions the 
Blacks, and that I was more than ever 
Alone. The greatest likelihood is, 
that Authority deemed it advisable to 
break up, for good and all, the Form- 
idable Confederacy they had laid hold 
of, and to prevent those Dangerous 
Men from ever again making Head 
together. But my whole Life was but 
a kind of Shifting and uncertain Vis- 
ion, and I took little note of the per- 
sonages with whom I came in contact, 
till looking around me, in a dull list- 
lessness about the Hoy, I found myself, 
cheek by jowl, with a motley crew, 
seemingly picked up hap-hazard from 
all the gaols in England. But ’twas 
all one to me, and I did not much care. 
Such a Stupor of Misery came over 
me, that for a time I almost forgot my 
good Quaker Friends, and the lessons 
they had taught me ; that I felt myself 
once more drifting into being a Dan- 
gerous little brute ; and that seeing 
the Master of the Hoy, a thirsty-look- 
iug man, lifting a great stone-bottle to 
his lips, I longed to serve him as I 
had served Corporal Foss with the 
demijohn of Brandy in the upper 
chamber of the Stag o’ Tyne. 

We landed not at Gravesend, but 

77 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


were forthwith removed to a bark 
called The Humane Hopwood , in com- 
pliment, I suppose, to Sir Basil, and 
which, after lying three days in the 
Downs, put into Deal to complete her 
complement of Unfortunate Persons. 
And I remember that, before making 
Deal, we saw a stranded Brig on the 
Goodwins, which was said to be a 
Leghorner, very rich with oil and 
silks; round which were gathered — 
just as you may see obscene Birds of 
Prey gathered round a dead carcass, 
and picking the Flesh from its bones, 
— at least a score of luggers belong- 
ing to the Deal Boatmen. These wor- 
thies had knocked holes in the hull of 
the wreck, and were busily hauling out 
packages and casks into their craft, 
coming to blows sometimes with axes 
and marlinspikes as to who should 
have the Biggest Booty. And it was 
said on Board that they would not un- 
frequently decoy by false signals, or 
positively haul, a vessel in distress on 
to those same Goodwins, — in whose 
fatal depths so many tall Ships lie En- 
gulfed, — in order to have the Plunder 
of her, which was more profitable 
than the Salvage, that being in the 
long-run mostly swallowed up by the 
Crimps and Longshore Lawyers of 
Deal and other Ports, who were wont 
to buy the Boatmen’s rights at a Ruin- 
ous Discount. Salvage Men, indeed, 
these Boatmen might well be called ; 
for when I was young it was their 
manner to act with an extreme of 
Savage Barbarity, thinking far less 
of saving Human Life than of clutch- 
ing at the waifs and strays of a Rich 
Cargo. And then up would sheer a 
Custom-House cutter or Revenue 
Pink, the skipper and his crew fierce 
in their defence of the Laws of the 
Land, the Admiralty Droits, and their 
own twentieths ; and from Hard blows 
with fists and spikes, matters would 
often come to the arbitrament of cut- 
lasses and firearms ; so that naval 
Engagements of a Miniature kind 
have often raged between the Deal 
Boatmen and the Kings Officers. 
Surely the world was a Hard and a 


Cruel and a Brutal one, when I was 
young — bating the Poor-Laws, which 
were tenderer than now ; for now that 
I am old the Gazettes are full of the 
Tender Valour and Merciful Devotion 
of the Deal Boatmen, who, in the 
most tempestuous weather, will leave 
their warm beds, their wives and 
bairns, and put off, with the Sea run- 
ning mountains high, to rescue Dis- 
traught Vessels and the Precious Lives 
that are within them. The Salvage 
Men of my time were brave enough, 
but they were likewise unconscionable 
rogues. 

The wind proved false to us at 
Deal, and we had to wait a weary 
ten days there. Captain Ilandsell 
was our commander. He was a man 
who knew but one course of proceed- 
ing. ’Twas always a word and a 
blow with him. By the same token 
the blow generally came first, and the 
word that followed was sure to be a 
bad one. The Captain of a Ship, 
from a Fishing Smack to a Three- 
Decker, was in those days a cruel and 
merciless Despot. ’Twas only the 
size of his ship and the number of 
his Equipage that decided the ques- 
tion whether he was to be a Petty 
Tyrant or a Tremendous One. His 
Empire was as undisputed as that of 
a Schoolmaster. Who was to gain- 
say him ? To whom, at Sea, could 
his victims appeal? To the Sharks 
and Grampuses, the Dolphins and 
the Bonettas ? He was privileged to 
beat, to fetter, to starve, to kick, to 
curse his Seamen. Even his Passen- 
gers trembled at the sight of this 
Bashaw of Bluewater ; tor he had 
Irons and Rations of Mouldy Biscuit 
for them too, if they offended him ; 
and many a Beautiful and Haughty 
Lady, paying full cabin-passage, has 
bowed down before the wrath of a 
vulgar Skipper, who, at home, she 
would have thought unworthy to 
Black her Shoes, and who would be 
seething in the revelry of a Tavern 
in Rotherhithe, while she would be 
footing it in the Saloons of St. James’s. 
Yet for a little time, at the outset of 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


liis voyage, the Skipper had his supe- 
rior ; the Bashaw had a Vizier who 
was bigger than he. There was a 
Terrible Man called the Pilot. He 
cared no more for the Captain than 
the Archbishop of Canterbury cares 
for a Charity-Boy. He gave him a 
piece of his Mind whenever he chose, 
and he would have his own Way, 
and had it. It was the delight of the 
Seamen to see their Tyrant and Bully 
degraded for a time under the supreme 
authority of the Pilot, who drank the 
Skipper’s rum ; who had the best 
Beef and Burgoo at the Skipper’s 
table ; who wore, if he was so 
minded, the Skipper’s tarpaulin ; who 
used the Skipper’s telescope, and 
thumbed his charts, and kicked his 
Cabin-boy, and swore his oaths, till, 
but for the fear of the Trinity House, 
I think the Skipper would have been 
mighty glad to fling him over the 
taffrail. But the reign of this Great 
Mogul of Lights and Points and 
Creeks soon came to an end. A 
River Pilot was the lesser evil, a 
Channel Pilot was the greater one ; 
but both were got rid of at last. 
Then the Skipper was himself again. 
He would drink himself blind with 
Punch in the forenoon, or cob his 
cabin-boy to Death’s door after dinner 
for a frolic. He could play the very 
Devil among the Hands, and they 
perforce bore with his capricious cru- 
elty ; for there is no running away 
from a Ship at Sea. Jack Shark is 
Gaoler, and keeps the door tight. 
There is but one way out of it, and 
that is to Mutiny, and hey. for the 
Black Flag and a Pirate’s Free and 
Jovial Life! But Mutiny is Hang- 
ing, and Piracy is Hanging and Gib- 
beting too ; and how seldom it is that 
you find Bold Hearts who have Stuff 
enough in them to Run the Great 
Risk ! As on sea, so it is on land. 
That Ugly Halter dances before a 
man’s eyes, and dazes him away from 
the Firmest Resolve. For how long 
will Schoolboys endure the hideous 
Enormities of a Gnawbit before they 
come to the Supreme Revolt of a 


Barring-out ! And for how long will 
a People suffer the mad tyranny of a 
Ruler, who outrages their Laws, who 
strangles their Liberties, who fleeces 
and squeezes and tramples upon them, 
before they take Heart of Grace, and 
up Pike and Musket, and down-derry- 
down with your Ruler, who is ordi- 
narily the basest of Poltroons, and 
runs away in a fright so soon as the 
first Goose is bold enough to cry out 
that the Capitol shall be saved ! 

Nothing of this did I think aboard 
The Humane Hopwood. I was too 
young to have any thought at all, 
save of rage and anguish when it 
pleased Captain Ilandsell, being in a 
cheerful mood, to belabour me, till I 
was black and blue, with a rope’s end. 
At the beginning of the voyage I was 
put into the hold, ironed, with the 
rest of the convicts, who were only 
permitted to come on deck twice a 
day, morning and evening, for a few 
Mouthfuls of Fresh air ; who were 
fed on the vilest biscuit and the most 
putrid water, getting but a scrap of 
fat pork and a dram of Rum that was 
like Fire twice a week, and who were 
treated generally, much like Negroes 
on the Middle Passage. But by and 
by, — say after ten days ; but I took 
little account of Time in this floating 
Purgatory, — Captain Ilandsell has 
me un ironed ; and his cabin-boy, a 
poor "weakly little lad, that could not 
stand much beating, being dead of 
that and a flux-, and so thrown over- 
board without any more words being 
said about it — (he was but a little 
Scottish castaway from Edinburg] i, 
who had been kidnapped late one 
night in the Grass Market, and sold 
to a Greenock skipper trading in that 
line for a hundred pound Scots — not 
above eight pounds of our currency) — 
and there is no Crowner’s Quest at 
sea, I was promoted to the Vacant 
Post. I was Strong enough now, 
and the Wound in my arm gave me 
no more pain ; and I think I grew 
daily stronger and more hardened 
under the shower of blows which the 
Skipper very liberally dealt out to 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


me ; I hardly know with more pleni- 
tude when he was vexed, or when he 
was pleased. But I was not the 
same bleating little Lamb that the 
Wolfish Knawbit used to torture. 
No, no ; John Dangerous’s appren- 
ticeship had been useful to him. 
Even as college-lads graduate in their 
Latin and Greek, so I had graduated 
upon braining the Grenadier with the 
demijohn. I could take kicks and 
cuffs, but I could likewise give them. 
And so, as this Roaring Skipper 
made me a Block to vent his spite 
upon, I would struggle with, and bite, 
and kick his^hins till sometimes we 
managed to fall together on the cabin- 
floor and tumble about there, — pull 
he, pull I, and a kick together ! — till 
the Watch would look down the sky- 
light upon us, grinning, and chuckle 
hoarsely that old Belzey, as they 
called their commander, (being a 
diminutive for Beelzebub,) and his 
young imp were having a tussle. 
Thus it came about that among these 
unthinking Seamen I grew to be 
called Pug (who, I have heard, is the 
Lesser Fiend), or Little Brimstone, 
or young Pitcliladle. And then I, in 
my Impish way, would offer to fight 
them too, resenting their scurril nick- 
names, and telling them that I had 
but one name, which was Jack Dan- 
gerous. 

The oddest thing in the world was 
that the Skipper, Ungovernable Brute 
as he was, seemed to take a kind of 
liking for me through my Resistance 
to him. 

“ What a young Tiger-cub it is ! ” 
he would say sometimes, swaying 
about his Rope’s End, as if undecided 
whether to hit me or not. “ Lie 
down, Rawbones! Lie down, Tear- 
em ! ” 

“You go to hit me again,” I would 
cry, all hot and flurried ; “ I’ll mark 
you, I will, you Tarpaulin Hedge- 
hog!” 

Then in a Rage he would make a 
Rush at me, and Welt me sorely ; 
but oftener he Avould Relent, and 
opening his Locker would give me a 


slice of Sausage, or a white Biscuit, 
or a nip of curious Nantz. 

At last he gave up maltreating me 
altogether. “ If you’d been of the 
same kidney as Sawney M’Gilli- 
cuddy,” he said, speaking of the poor 
little Scottish lad who Died, “ I’d 
have made you food for fishes long 
ago. ’Slid, my younker, but they 
should ’a had their meat tender 
enough, or there’s no vartue in hack- 
led hemp for a lacing! But you’ve 
got a Heart, my lad ; and if you’re 
not hanged before you’re out of your 
Teens, you’ll show the World that 
you can Bite as well as Bark some of 
these days.” 

So I became a prime Favourite 
with Captain Handsell ; and, in the 
Expansion of his Liking towards me, 
he began to give me instruction in 
the vocation in which a portion of 
my life has since (with no small Dis- 
tinction, though I say it that should 
not) been passed. Of scientific Nav- 
igation this very Rude and Boorish 
person knew little, if anything; but 
as a Practical Seaman he had much 
skill and experience. Indeed, if the 
Hands had not enjoyed a lively Faith 
in the solid sea-going Qualities of 
“Foul Weather Bob,” as they called 
him when they did not choose to give 
him his demoniacal appellation, they 
would have Mutinied, and sent him, 
Lashed to a grating, on a voyage of 
Discovery at least twice in every 
Twenty-Four Hoflrs. For he led 
them a most Fearful life. 

I had imparted to him that I was 
somewhat of a scholar, and that Cap- 
tain Night had taught me something 
besides stealing the King’s Deer. 
There was a Bible on board, which 
the Skipper never read, — and read, 
indeed, he was scarcely able to do, — 
but which he turned to the unseemly 
use, when he had been over-cruel to 
his crew, of swearing them upon it, 
that they would not inform against 
him when they got into port. For 
this was an odd medley of a man, 
and had his moments of Remorse for 
evil-doing, or else of Fear as to what 

80 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


might be the Consequences when he 
reached a Land where some degree 
of Law and Justice were recognized. 
At some times he would propitiate 
his crew with donatives of Rum, or 
even of Money ; but the next day he 
would have his Cruelty Fit on again, 
and use his men with ten times more 
Fierceness and Arbitrary Barbarity. 
But to this Bible and a volume of 
Nautical Tables our Library was 
confined ; and as he troubled himself 
very little about the latter, I was set 
to read to him sometimes after dinner 
from the Good Book. But he was 
ever coarse and ungovernable, and 
would have no Righteous Doctrine or 
Tender Precepts, but only took de- 
light when I read to him from the 
Old Scriptures the stories of the Jews, 
their bloody wars, and how their cap- 
tains and men of war slew their 
Thousands and their Tens of Thou- 
sands in Battle. And with shame I 
own that ’twas these Furious Narra- 
tives that I liked also ; and with ex- 
ceeding pleasure read of Joshua his 
victories, and Samson his achieve- 
ments, and Gideon how he battled, 
and Agag how they hewed him to 
pieces. Little cockering books I see 
now put forth, with pretty decoying 
pictures, which little children are bid- 
den to read. Stories from the Old 
Testament are dressed up in pretty 
sugared language. Oh, you makers 
of these little books ! oh, you fond 
mothers who place them so deftly in 
your children’s hands ! bethink you 
whether this strong meat is fit for 
Babes. An old Man, whose life has 
been passed in Storms and Stratagems 
and Violence, not innocent of blood- 
spilling, bids you beware ! Let the 
children read that other Book, its 
Sweet and Tender Counsels, its ex- 
amples of Mercy and Love to all 
Mankind. But if I had a child five 
or six years old, would I let him fill 
himself with the horrible chronicles 
of Lust, and Spoliation, and Hatred, 
and Murder, and Revenge ? “ Why 

shouldn’t I torture the cat ? ” asks 
little Tommy. “ Didn’t the man in 
C * 


the Good Book tie blazing Torches to 
the foxes’ tails ? ” And little Tom- 
my has some show of reason on his 
side. Let the children grow up ; 
wait till their stomachs are strong 
enough to digest this potent victual. 
It is hard indeed for one who has 
been a Protestant alway to have to 
confess that when such indiscreet 
reading is placed in children’s hands, 
those crafty Romish ecclesiastics 
speak not altogether foolishly when 
they tell us that the mere Word slay- 
eth. But on this point I am agreed 
to consult Doctor Dubiety, and to be 
bound by his decision. 

In so reading to the Skipper every 
day, I did not forget to exercise my- 
self in that other art of Writing, and 
was in time serviceable enough to be 
able to keep, in something like a ra- 
tional and legible form, the Log of 
The Humane Hopwood , "which here- 
tofore had been a kind of cabalistic 
Register, full of blots, crosses, half- 
moons, and zigzags, like the chalk 
score of an unlettered Ale-wife. And 
the more I read (of surely the grandest 
and simplest language in the world), 
the more I discovered how ignorant 
I was of that essential art of Spelling, 
and blushed at the vile manner in 
which the Petition I had written to 
the King of England was set down. 
And before we came to our voyage’s 
end, I had made a noticeable improve- 
ment in the Curious Mystery of writ- 
ing Plain English. 

One day as the Skipper was taking 
Tobacco (for he was a great Smoker), 
he said to me, “Jack, do you know 
what you are, lad ? ” 

“ Your cabin-boy,” I answered ; 
“ bound to fetch and carry ; hempen 
wages, and not much better treated 
than a dog.” 

“ You lie, you scum,” Captain 
Ilandsell answered pleasantly. “You 
go snacks with me in the very best, 
and your beef is boiled in my own 
copper. But ’tisn’t that I mean. Do 
you know how you hail on the World’s 
books ? what the number of your mess 
in Life is ? ” 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


“Yes,” I replied ; “I’m a Trans- 
port. W as to have been hanged ; 
but I wrote out a Petition, and the 
Gentlemen in London gave it to the 
King, God bless him ! ” 

“ Vastly well, mate ! ” continued the 
Captain. “Do you know what a 
Transport is ? ” 

“ No ; something very bad, I sup- 
pose ; though I don’t see that he can 
be much worse off than a cabin-boy 
that’s been cast for Death, and lain iu 
gaol with a bayonet-wound he got from 
a Grenadier, — let alone having been 
among the Blacks, and paid anigh to 
Death by Gnawbit, — when he was 
born a Gentleman.” 

“ You lie again. To be a Transport 
is worse than aught you’ve had. Why 
a cat in a furnace without claws is an 
Angel of bliss along of a Transport ! 
You’re living in a land of beans and 
bacon now, in a land of milk and 
honey and new rum. Wait till you 
get to Jamaica. The hundred and 
odd vagabonds that I’ve got aboard 
will be given over to the Sheriff at 
Port Royal, and he’ll sell ’em by 
auction ; and for as long as they’re 
sent across the herring-pond they’ll be 
slaves, and worse than slaves, to the 
planters ; for the black Niggers them- 
selves, rot’em ! make a mock of a New- 
gate bird. Hard work in the blazing 
sun, scarce enough to eat to keep body 
and soul together, the cat-o’-nine-tails 
every day, with the cow-hide for a 
change ; and, when your term’s out, 
not a Joe in your pocket to help you 
to get back to your own country again. 
That’s the life of a Transport, my 
hearty. Why, it’s worse cheer than 
oue of my own hands gets here on 
shipboard ! ” 

“ I think I’d rather be hanged,” I 
said, with something like a Trembling 
come over me at the Picture the 
Skipper had drawn. 

u I should rather think you would ; 
but such isn’t your luck, little Jack 
Dangerous. What would you say if 
I was to tell you that you ain’t a 
Transport at all ? ” 

I stammered out something, I know 


not what, but could make no substan- 
tial reply. 

“ Not a bit of it,” continued Captain 
Handsell, who by this time was get- 
ting somewhat Brisk with his after- 
noon’s Punch. “ Hang it, who’s 
afraid? I like thee, lad. I’m off 
my bargain, and don’t care a salt her- 
ring if I’m a loser by a few broad 
pieces in not sticking to it. I tell 
thee, Jack, thou’rt Free, as Free as I 
am; leastways if we get to Jamaica 
without going to Davy Jones’s Locker ; 
for on blue water no man can say he’s 
Free. No ; not the Skipper even.” 

And then he told me, to my exceed- 
ing Amazement and Delight, of what 
an Iniquitous Transaction I had very 
nearly been made the victim. It 
seems that although the Pardon grant- 
ed me after the Petition I had sent to 
his Majesty was conditional on my 
transporting myself to the Plantations, 
further influence had been made for 
me in London, — by whom I knew 
not then, but I have since discovered, 
— and on the very Day of the arrival 
of our condemned crew in London, an 
Entire and Free Pardon had been 
issued for John Dangerous and lodged 
in the hands of Sir Basil Hopwood at 
his house in Bishopsgate Street. 
Along with this merciful Document 
there came a letter from one of his 
Majesty’s principal Secretaries of 
State, in which directions were given 
that I was to be delivered over to a 
person who was my Guardian. And 
that I was in no danger of being again 
given up to the villains Cadwalhider 
and Talmash, or their Instrument 
Gnawbit, was clear, I think, from 
what Captain Handsell told me : — 
That the Person bringing the letter — 
the Pardon itself being in the hands 
of a King’s Messenger — had the ap- 
pearance, although dressed in a lay 
habit, of being a Foreign Ecclesiastic. 
The crafty Extortioner of a Knight 
and Alderman makes answer that I 
had not come with the other Trans- 
ports to London, but had been left 
sick at Brentford, in the care of an 
agent of his there ; but he entreats the 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


Foreign Person to go visit Newgate, 
where he had another gang of unhappy 
persons for Transportation, and see if 
I had arrived. And all this while the 
wretch knew that I was safely clapped 
up in the yard of the Borough Clink. 
And the Foreign Person being met at 
the Old Bailey by one of Hopwood’s 
creatures, this Thing takes him to 
walk on the leads of the Sessions 
House, praying him not to enter the 
gaol, where many had lately been 
stricken with the Distemper, and by 
and by up comes a Messenger all hot 
as it seemed with express riding, — 
though his sweat and dust were all 
Forged, — and says that a gang of 
Ruffians have broken up the Cage of 
Brentford, where, for greater safety, 
the Boy Dangerous had been bestowed ; 
that these Ruffians were supposed to 
be the remnant of the Blacks of Chari- 
wood Chase who had escaped from 
capture ; and that they had stolen 
away the Boy Dangerous, and made 
clear off with him. And, indeed, it 
was a curious circumstance that Brent- 
ford Cage was that day broken into 
(the Times were very Lawless), and 
a Strange Boy taken out therefrom. 
But Hopwood had artfully separated 
me from the Blacks who were in New- 
gate, and placed me among a stranger 
mob of riffraff in the Borough Clink. 
The Newgate Gang were in due time 
taken, not to Gravesend, but straight 
away from the Pool to Richmond in 
Virginia ; whereas I was conveyed to 
Gravesend and Deal, and shipped off 
to Jamaica in The Humane Hopwood . 
And what do you think was the object 
of this Humane Scoundrel in thus 
sequestrating the King’s Pardon and 
robbing me of my liberty, and perhaps 
of the occasion of returning to the 
state of a Gentleman, in which I was 
Born ? ’Twas simply to kidnap me, 
and make a wretched profit of twenty 
or thirty pounds, — the Commander 
of his Ship going him half in the ad- 
venture, — by selling me in the West 
Indies, where white boys not being 
Transports were then much in de- 
mand, to be brought up as clerks and 

83 


cash-keepers to the Planters. Sure 
diere was never such a Diabolical Plot 
for so sorry an end ; but a vast num- 
ber of paltry conspiracies, carried out 
with infernal Cunning and Ingenuity, 
had made, in the course of years, Sir 
Basil Hopwood rich and mighty, a 
Knight and Alderman, Parliament 
man and ex-Lord Mayor. To carry 
out these designs was just part of the 
ordinary calling of a Ship-master in 
those days. ’Twas looked upon as 
the simplest matter of business in the 
world. To kidnap a child was such 
an every-day deed of devilry, that the 
slightest amount of pains was deemed 
sufficing to conceal the abominable 
thing. And thus the Foreign Person 
saw with dolorous Eyes the convoy of 
convicts take their departure from 
Newgate to ship on board the Virgi- 
nian vessel at St. Katherine’s Stairs, 
while poor little Jack Dangerous was 
being smuggled away from Gravesend 
to Jamaica. 

And to Jamaica I should have gone 
to be sold as a Slave, but for the 
strange occurrence of the Captain 
taking a liking to me. He dared not 
have kept me among the convicts, as 
the Sheriff at Port Royal would have 
had a List in Duplicate of their names 
sent out by a fast-sailing King’s Ship ; 
for the Government at Home had 
some faint Suspicion of the prevailing 
custom of Kidnapping, and made some 
Feeble Attempts to stop it. But he 
would have kept me on board as a 
ship-boy till the Auction of the Trans- 
ports was over, and then he would 
have coolly sold me, for as much as I 
would fetch, to some Merchant of 
Kingston or Port Royal, who was 
used to deal in flesh and blood, and 
who, in due course, would have trans- 
ferred me, at a profit, to some up- 
country planter. 

“ But that shall never be, Jack my 
hearty,” Captain Handsell exclaimed, 
when, after many more pipes of To- 
bacco and rummers of Punch, he had 
explained these wonderful things to 
me. “I shall lose my half share in 
the venture, and shall have to tell a 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, 


game lie to yonder old Skin-a-flea-for- 
the-hide-and-fat in London ; but what 
o’ that ? I tell thee I won’t have the 
sale of thy flesh and blood on my 
conscience. No slave shall you be, 
forsooth. I have an aunt at Kingston, 
as honest a woman as ever broke 
biscuit, although she has got a dash 
of the tar-brush on her mug, and she 
shall take charge of thee ; and if thou 
were a gentleman born, I’ll be hanged 
if thou sha’n’t be a gentleman bred.” 

It would have been more fitted to 
the performance of this Honorable 
and Upright Action towards one that 
lie had no motive at all in serving (in 
Fact, his Interest lay right the other 
way) , that I should be able to chroni- 
cle a sensible Reformation in my 
Commander’s bearing and conduct 
towards others ; but, alas, that I am 
unable to do ; the truth being that he 
continued, unto the very end of our 
voyage, to be towards the Hands the 
same brutal and merciless Tyrant that 
he had once, in the days of his Rope’s- 
End Discipline, been towards me. 
*Twas Punch and Cobbing, Tobacco 
and Ugly Words, from the rising of 
the Sun until the setting of the same. 
And for this reason it is (having seen 
so many Contradictions in Human 
character) that I am never surprised 
to hear of a Good Action on the part 
of a very Bad Man, or of a Bad Action 
done by him who is ordinarily ac- 
counted a very Good one. 

The Humane Hopwood was a very 
bad Sailer, — being, in truth, as Leaky 
an old Tub as ever escaped breaking 
up for Fire-Wood .at Lumberers* 
Wharfs, — and we were seven weeks 
at Sea before we fell in with a trade- 
wind, and then setting every Rag we 
could hoist, went gaily before that 
Favorable breeze, and so cast anchor 
at Port Royal in the island of Jamaica. 

Captain Ilandsell was as good as 
his word. Not a syllable did he say 
to the SherifF of Kingston about my 
not being a Transport, or being, in- 
deed, in the Flesh at all in those parts ; 
for he argued that the Sheriff might have 
some foregatherings with the Knight 


and Alderman of Bishopsgate Street 
by correspondence, and that the W eal- 
thy Extortioner might make use of his 
credit in the Sugar Islands to do me, 
some day or another, an ill turn. But 
he had me privily on shore when the 
Transports had all been assigned to 
different task-masters ; and in due 
time he introduced me to his Aunt, 
his Brother’s Wife indeed (and I be- 
lieve he had come out to the Island 
with an Old-Bailey Passport ; but Rum 
and the climate had been too strong 
for him, and he had so Died and left 
her a Widow). 

She was by right and title, then, 
Mistress Ilandsell, with the Christian 
name of Sarah ; but among the colored 
people of Kingston she went by the 
name of Maum Buckey, and, among 
her more immediate intimates, as 
u Yaller Sally.” And, although she 
passed for being very Wealthy, I 
declare that she was nothing but a 
Washerwoman. This Washing Trade 
of hers, however, which she carried 
on for the King and Merchants’ ships 
that were in Harbor, and for nearly 
all the rich Merchants and Traders of 
Kingston, brought Maum Buckey in 
a very pretty penny ; and not only 
was her tub commerce a brisk ready- 
money business, but she had two 
flourishing plantations — one for the 
growing of Coffee, and the other of 
Sugar — near the town of Savannah 
de la Mar. Moreover, she had a dis- 
tillery of Rum and Arrack in Kings- 
ton itself, and every body agreed 
that she must be very well to do in 
the world. She was an immensely 
fat old Mulatto woman, on the wrong 
side of Fifty when I knew her, and 
her Mother had been a slave that had 
been the Favorite House-keeper to the 
English Governor, who, dying, left 
her her Freedom, and enough Money 
to carry on that Trade of cleansing 
clothes which her Daughter after- 
wards made so profitable. 

Maum Buckey and I speedily be- 
came very good friends. She was 
proud of her relationship with a white 
Englishman — a right go-down Biickra 
84 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


as she called him — who commanded a 
ship, and besides recommended her to 
other gentlemen in his way for a 
Washerwoman ; and although she 
took care to inform me, before we 
had been twenty-four hours acquaint- 
ed, that her Husband, Sam Handsell, 
had been a sad Rascal, who would 
have drunk all her Money away, had 
he not Timeously drunk himself to 
death, she made me the friendliest wel- 
come, and promised that she would do 
all she could for me, “ the little pic- 
caninny buckra,” who was set down 
by Mr. Handsell as being the son of 
an old Shipmate of his that had met 
with misfortunes. After a six- weeks* 
stay in the Island, and The Humane 
Hopwood getting Freight in the w T ay 
of Sugar, Captain Handsell bade me 
good-by, and set sail with a fair wind 
for Bristol, England. I never set 
Eyes npon him again. You see, my 
Friends, that this is no cunningly-spun 
Romance, in which a character disap- 
pears for a Season, and turns up again, 
as pat as you please, at the end of the 
Fourth Volume ; but a plain Narrative 
of Facts, in which the Personages in- 
troduced must needs Come and Go 
precisely as they Came and Went to 
me in Real Life. I have often wished, 
when I had Power and Riches, to 
meet with and show my Gratitude to 
the rough old Sea-Porpoise that used 
to Rope’s-End me so, -and was so 
tearing a Tyrant to his Hands, and 
yet in a mere fit of kind-heartedness 
played the Honest Man to . me, when 
All Things seemed against me, and 
rescued John Dangerous from a Foul 
and Wicked Trap. 

Maum Buckey had a great rambl- 
ing house — it had but one Storey, with 
a Piazza running round, but a huge 
number of Rooms and Yards — in the 
suburbs of Kingston. There did I 
take up my abode. She had at least 
twenty Negro and Mulotter Women 
and Girls that worked for her at the 
Washing, and at Starching and Iron- 
ing, for the Mill was always going 
with her. *Twas wash, wash, wash, 
and wring, wring, wring, and scrub, 


scrub, scrub, all day and all night too, 
when the harbor was full of ships. 
Not that she ever touched Soapsuds 
or Flat-iron or Goffering-stick herself. 
She was vastly too much of a Fine 
Lady for that, and would loll about in 
a great chair, — one Negro child fan- 
ning her with a great Palmetto, and 
another tickling the soles of her feet, — 
sipping her Sangaree as daintily as 
you please. She was the most igno- 
rant old creature that ever was known, 
could neither read nor write, and made 
a sad jumble of the King’s English 
when*she spoke ; yet, by mere natural 
quickness and rule-of-thumb, she could 
calculate to a Joe how much a Ship- 
master’s Washing-Bill came to. And 
when she had settled that according to 
her Scale of Charges, which were of 
the most Exorbitant Kind, she would 
Grin and say, u He dam ship, good 
consignee ; ” or, u He dam ship, dam 
rich owner ; stick him on ’nother dam 
fi’ poun’ English, my chile ; ” and, for 
some curious reason or another, ’twas 
seldom that a shipmaster cared to 
quarrel with Maum Buckey’s Wash- 
ing-Bills. She, being so unlettered, had 
been compelled to engage all manner 
of Whites who could write and read — 
now Transports, now Free — to keep 
her accounts, and draw her necessary 
writings ; but it was hard to tell which 
were the greatest Rogues, the Convicts 
whose term was out, or the Free Gen- 
tlemen who had come out without a 
pair of iron garters to their hose. In 
those days all our plantations, and 
Jamaica most notably, were full of the 
very Scum and Riffraff of our English 
towns. ’Twas as though you had let 
Fleet Ditch, dead dogs and all, loose 
on a W est-India Island. That Ragged 
Regiment which Falstaff in the Play 
would not march through Coventry 
with were at free quarters in Jamaica, 
leave alone the regular garrison of 
King’s Troops, of which the private 
men were mostly pickpockets, poach- 
ers, and runaway serving-men, who 
had enlisted to save themselves from 
a merry-go-round at Rope Fair ; and 
the officers the worst and most de- 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


boshed Genlfomen that ever wore his 
Majesty’s cockade, and gave them- 
selves airs because they had three- 
quarters of a yard of black ribbon 
crinked up in their hats. Captain 
This, who had been kicked out of a 
Charing-Cross coffee-house for pocket- 
ing a Punch-ladle while the drawer 
was not looking ; Lieutenant That, 
who had been caned on the Mall for 
cheating at cards ; and Ensign ’Tother, 
who had been my lord’s valet, and 
married his Madam for enough cash 
to buy a pair of colors withal. Mili- 
tary gentlemen of this feather used to 
serve in the West Indies in those days, 
and swagger about Kingston as proud 
as peacocks, when every one of them 
had done that at home they should be 
cashiered for. Maum Buckey would 
not have to do with these light-come- 
light-go-gallants. “ Me wash for 
Gem’n Ship-Cap’n, Gem’n Marchant, 
Gem’n Keep-store,” she would ob- 
serve ; “ me not wash for dam Soger- 
officer.” 

Iler Sugar Plantation was in charge 
of a shrewd North-countryman, against 
whom, save that he was a runaway 
bankrupt from Hull in England, there 
was nothing to say. Her Coffee Es- 
tate was managed by an Irishman that 
had married, as he thought, a great 
Fortune, but found the day after his 
wedding that she was but a fortune- 
hunter like himself, and had at least 
three husbands living in divers parts 
of the world. And finally, the Dis- 
tillery had for overseer one, an Eng- 
lishman, that had been a Horse Couper, 
and a runner for the Crimps at W ap- 
ping, and a supercargo that was not 
too honest, — albeit he had to keep his 
accounts pretty square with Maum 
Buckey, than whom there never was 
a woman who had a keener Eye for 
business or a finer Scent for a Rogue. 

She made me her Bookkeeper for 
the Washing Department. ’Twas not 
a very dignified Employment for one 
that had been a young Gentleman, 
but ’twas vastly better than the Fate 
of one who, but for a mere Accident, 
might have been a young Slave. So 


I kept Maum Buckey’s Books, teach- 
ing myself how to do so featly from a 
Ready Reckoner and Accomptant’s 
Assistant (Mr. Cocker’s), which I 
bought at a Bookstore in Kingston. 
The work was pretty hard, and the 
old Dame of the Tub kept me tightly 
enough at it ; but when work was over 
she was very kind to me, and we had 
the best of living; ducks and geese 
and turkeys and pork (of which the 
Mulotter women are inordinately fond, 
although I never could reconcile to 
myself how their stomachs, in so hot 
a climate, could endure so Luscious a 
Food) ; fish of the primest from the 
Harbor of Port Royal, lobsters and 
crabs and turtle (which is as cheap as 
Tripe with us, and so plentiful, that 
the Niggers will sometimes disdain to 
eat it, though ’tis excellent served as 
soup in the creature’s own shell, and a 
most digestible Viand) ; to say nothing 
of bananas, shaddock, mango, plan- 
tains, and the many delicious fruits 
and vegetables of that Fertile Colony ; 
where, if the land-breeze in the morn- 
ing did not half choke you with harsh 
dust, and the sea-breeze in the after- 
noon pierce you to the marrow with 
deadly chills, and if one could abstain 
from surfeits of fruits and over-drink- 
ing of the too abundant ardent spirits 
of the country, a man might live a 
very jovial kind of life. However, I 
was young and healthy, and, though 
never a shirk of my glass in after- 
days, prudently moderate in my Pota- 
tions. During four years that I passed 
in the island of Jamaica (one of the 
brightest jewels in the British Crown, 
and as Loyal, I delight to say, as I 
am myself), I don’t think I had the 
Yellow Fever more than three times, 
and at last grew as tough as leather, 
and could say Bo to a land-crab (how 
many a White Man’s carcass have 
those, crabs picked clean at the Pali- 
sadoes ! ) , as though I feared him no 
more than a Green Goose. 

It may be fitting here that I should 
say something about that Abominable 
Curse of Negro Slavery, which was 
then so Familiar and Unquestioned a 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


Thing in all our Colonies, that its 
innate and Detestable Wickedness was 
scarcely taken into account in men’s 
minds. Speaking only by the Card, 
and of that which I saw with my own 
eyes, I don’t think that Maum Buckey 
was any crueller than other slave- 
owners of her class ; for ’tis well 
known that the Mulotter women are 
far more severe task-mistresses than 
the Whites. But Lord, Whites and 
colored people, who in the West Indies 
are permitted, when free, to own their 
fellow-creatures who are only a shade 
darker in color than they, left little to 
choose betwixt on the score of cruelty. 
When I tell you that I have seen Slave 
Women and Girls chained to the 
wasliing-tub, their naked bodies all 
one gore of blood from the lashes of 
the whip ; that on the public wharf at 
Kingston I have seen a Negro man 
drawn up by his hands to a crane used 
for lifting merchandise, while his toes, 
that barely touched the ground, were 
ballasted with a thirty-pound weight, 
and, in that Trim, beaten with the 
Raw Hide or with Tamarind-Bushes 
till you could lay your two fingers in 
the furrows made by the whip (with 
which expert Scourgineers boast they 
can lay deep ruts in a Deal Board), 
or else I have seen the poor Miserable 
Wretch the next day lying on his face 
on the Beach, and a Comrade taking 
the prickles of the Tamarind Stubs, 
which are tempered in the Fire, and 
far worse than English Thornbushes, 
out of his back ; — you may imagine 
that ’twas no milk-and-water Regiment 
that the slaves in the West Indies had 
to undergo at the hands of their Hard 
masters and mistresses. Also, I have 
known slaves taken to the Sick-House, 
or Hospital, so dreadfully mangled 
with unmerciful correction as for their 
wounds to be one mass of putrefac- 
tion, and they shortly do give up the 
Ghost ; while, at other times, I have 
seen unfortunate creatures that had 
been so lacerated, both back and front, 
as to be obliged to crawl about on All 
Fours. Likewise have I seen Negro 
men, Negro women, yea, and Negro 


children, with iron collars and prong3 
about their necks ; with logs riveted 
to their legs, with their Ears torn 
off, their Nostrils slit, their Cheeks 
branded, and otherwise most fright- 
fully mutilated. Item, I have known 
at the dinner-table of a Planter of 
wealth and repute, the Jumper, or 
Public Flogger, to come in and ask if 
Master and Missee had any commands 
for him ; and, by the order of the 
Lady of the House, take out two 
Decent Women that had been waiting 
at Table, and give them fifty lashes 
apiece on the public parade, every 
stroke drawing Blood and bringing 
Flesh with it, and they, when all was 
over, embracing and thanking him for 
their Punishment, as was the custom 
of the Colony. Item, within my own 
knowledge have I been made familiar 
with many acts of the Deepest Bar- 
barity. Mistresses, for Jealousy or 
Caprice, pouring boiling-water or hot 
melted Sealing-Wax on their slave 
girls’ flesh after they had suffered the 
worst Tortures of the whip ; and white 
Ladies of Education rubbing Cayenne- 
pepper into the eyes of Negroes who 
had offended them, or singeing the 
tenderest parts of their limbs with 
sticks of fire. And of one horrid in- 
stance have I heard of Malignant and 
Hellish revenge in Two Ladies who 
were Sisters (and bred at a Fine 
Boarding-School in England), who, 
having a spite against a yellow woman 
that attended on them, did tie her 
hands and feet, and so beat her nearly 
to death with the heels of their slip- 
pers ; and not satisfied with that, or 
with laving her gashed body with Vin- 
egar and Chillies, did send for a Negro 
man, and bid him, under threats of 
punishment, strike out two of the Vic- 
tim’s teeth with a punch, which, to the 
shame of Human Womanhood, was 
done. 

But enough of these Horrors : — not 
the worst that I have seen, though, in 
the course of my Adventures ; only I 
will not further sicken you with the 
Recital of the Sufferings inflicted on 
the Wretched Creatures by Ladies and 


Gentlemen, who had had the first 
breeding, and went to Church every 
Sunday. I have merely set down 
these dreadful things to work out the 
theory of my Belief, that the World 
is growing Milder and more Merciful 
every day; and that the Barbarities 
which were once openly practised in 
the broad sunshine, and without e’er 
a one lifting finger or wagging tongue 
against them, are becoming rarer and 
rarer, and will soon be Impossible of 
Commission. The unspeakable Mis- 
eries of the Middle Passage (of which 
I have been an eye-witness) exist no 

88 


more ; really Humane and Charitable 
Gentlemen, not such False Kogues 
and Kidnappers as your Hopwoods, 
are bestirring themselves in Parlia- 
ment and elsewhere to better the 
Dolorous Condition of the Negro ; and 
although it may be a Decree of Provi- 
dence that the children of Ham are to 
continue always slaves and servants to 
their white brethren, I see every day 
that men’s hearts are being more 
and more benevolently turned towards 
them, and that laws, ere long, will be 
made to forbid their being treated 
worse than the beasts that perish. 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


Chapter the Eleventh. 

OF OTHER MY ADVENTURES UNTIL MY 
COMING TO BE A MAN. 

Thus in a sultry colony, among 
Black Negroes and their cruel Task- 
masters, and I the clerk to a Mulotter 
Washerwoman, did I come to be full 
sixteen years of age, and a stalwart 
Lad of my inches. But for that Fate, 
which from the first irrevocably de- 
creed that mine was to be a Roving 
Life, almost to its end, I might have 
continued in the employ of Maum 
Buckey until Manhood overtook me. 
The Dame was not unfavorable to- 
wards me ; and, without vanity, may 
I say that, had I waited my occasion, 
’tis not unlikely but that I might have 
married her, and become the possessor 
of her plump Money-Bags, full of 
Moidores, pilar Dollars, and pieces of 
Eight. Happily I was not permitted 
so to disparage my lineage, and put a 
coffee-colored blot on my escutcheon. 
No, my Lilias is no Mulotter Quarter- 
caste. ’Twas my roving propensity 
that made me set but little store by the 
sugar-eyes and Molasses-speech which 
Madam Soapsuds was hot loth to be- 
stow on me, a tall and likely Lad. I 
valued her sweetness just as though it 
had been so much canetrash. With 
much impatience I had waited for the 
coming back of my friendly skipper, 
that he might advise me as to my 
future career. But, as I have already 
warned the Reader, it was fated that 
I was to see that kindly shipmaster no 
more. Once, indeed, the old ship 
came into Port Royal, and right eager- 
ly did I take boat and board her. But 
her name had been changed from The 
Humane Hopwood to The Protestant 
Pledge. She was in the Guinea trade 
now, and brought Negroes, poor souls ! 


to slave in our Plantations. The 
Mariner that was her commander had 
but dismal news to tell me of my 
friendly Handsell. He, returning to 
the old country, had it seems a Mighty 
Quarrel with his Patron — and my 
Patron too, forsooth ! — Villain Hop- 
wood. Whether he had reproached 
him with his treachery to me or not, 
I know not ; but it is certain that both 
parted full of Wrath and High Dis- 
dain, and each swearing to be the 
Ruin of the other. But Gold had, as 
it has always in a Mammon-ridden 
world, the longest, strongest pull. 
Devil Hopwood found it easy to get 
the better of a poor unlettered tarpau- 
lin, that knew well enough the way 
into a Wapping Alehouse, but quite 
lost himself in threading the mazes 
of a great man’s Antechamber. ’Tis 
inconceivable how much dirty work 
there was done in my young days 
between Corinthian columns and over 
Turkey carpets, and under ceilings 
painted by Verrio and Laguerre. Sir 
Basil, I believe, went to a great man, 
and puts a hundred guineas into the 
hands of this Gentleman — by the 
which I mean his Menial Servant, 
save that he wore no Livery ; but 
there’s many a Base wretch hath his 
soul in plush, and the Devil’s aigulets 
on his heart. How much out of the 
Hundred my Lord took, and how much 
his Gentleman kept, it serves not to 
inquire. They struck a Bargain, and 
short was the Time before Ruin came 
swooping down on Captain Handsell. 
He had gone into the Channel trade ; 
and they must needs have him ex- 
chequered for smuggling brandies and 
lace from St. Male’s. Quick on this 
follows a criminal Indictment, from 
which, as a Fool, he flies ; for he 
might at least have threatened to say 
89 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


damaging things of Brute Basil in the 
dock, and have made terms with him 
before trial came on. And then he 
must needs take command of a mis- 
erable lugger that fetched and carried 
between Deal and Dunquerque — the 
old, old, sorry, tinpot business of kegs 
of strong waters, and worse contra- 
band in the guise of Jacobite des- 
patches. To think of brave men’s 
lives being risked in these twopenny 
errands, and a heart of Oak brought 
to the gallows, that clowns may get 
drunk the cheaper, or traitors — for 
your Jacobite conspirators were but 
handy-dandy Judases, now to King 
James, and now to King George — 
exchange their rubbishing ciphers the 
easier ! It drives me wild to think 
of these pinchbeck enterprizes. If a 
Man’s tastes lead him towards the 
Open, the Bold, and the Free, e’en 
let him ship himself off to a far clim- 
ate, the hotter the better, where Prizes 
are rich, and the King’s Avrit in As- 
sault and Battery runneth not, — nor 
for a great many other things ayont 
Assault and Battery, — and where, up 
a snug creek, of which lie knows the 
pilotage well, he may give a good 
account of a King’s ship when he 
finds her. He who does anything 
contrair to English law within five 
hundred leagues of an English lawyer 
or an English law-court is a very Ass 
and Dolt. Fees and costs will have 
their cravings ; and from the process- 
server to the Hangman all will have 
their due. Give me an offing, where 
there is no law but that of the strong 
hand and the bold Heart. Any sharks 
but land-sharks for John Dangerous. 
I never see a parchment-visaged, fee- 
elutching limb of the law but I long 
to beat him, and, if I had him on blue 
water, to trice him up higher than 
ever he went before. But for a keg 
of brandy ! But for a packet of treason- 
papers ! Shame ! ’tis base, ’tis idiotic. 
And this did the unlucky Handsell 
find to his cost. I believe he was slain 
in a midnight affray with some Riding 
Officers of the Customs close unto 
Deal, about two years after his goin; 


into a trade that was as mean as it 
was perilous. 

So no more Hope for me from that 
quarter. The skipper of The Pro- 
testant Pledge would have retained me 
on board for a Carouse ; but I had 
too much care for my Head and my 
Liver for such pranks, and went back, 
as dolefully as might be, to keep Maum 
Buckey’s washing-books. I chafed at 
the thought that I could do no more. 
I told her the grim news I had heard 
of her brother-in-law, whereat she 
wept somewhat ; for where Whites 
were concerned she was not a hard- 
hearted woman. But she cheered up 
speedily, saying that Samhe had come 
to as sorry an end, and that she sup- 
posed there Avas but one way with the 
Handsells, Rum and Riot being gen- 
erally their Ruin. 

As it is one of the failings of youth 
not to know when it is Avell off, and 
to groAv A-Aveary even of continued 
prosperity, I admit that the life I led 
palled upon me, and that I longed to 
change it. But it Avas not, all things 
considered, so very unpleasant a one. 
True, the employment Avas a sorry 
one, and utterly beneath the dignity 
of a Gentleman, such as bearing far- 
dels in the streets or unloading casks 
and bales at the wharf, for instance. 
But it is in man’s nature never to be 
satisfied, and Avhen he is Avell to long 
to be better, and so, by force of striv- 
ing, to tumble into a Hole, where in- 
deed he is at the Best, for he is Dead. 
At this distance of time, though I have 
many comforts around me, — Worldly 
Goods, a Reputable name, my Child, 
and her Husband, — I still look back 
on my old life in Jamaica, and 
confess that Providence dealt \ r ery 
mercifully with me in those bygone 
days. For I had enough to eat and 
to drink, and a Mistress Avho, although 
Passionate and Quarrelsome enough 
by times, Avas not unkind. If she 
would swear, she would also tender 
gentle Language upon occasion ; and 
if she Avould throAv things, she Avas 
not backward in giving one a dollar to 
heal one’s pate. An odd life it was, 
90 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


truly. There was very little of that 
magnificence about the town of Port 
Royal in my days which I have heard 
the Creoles to boast about. It may 
have been handsome enough in the 
Spaniard’s Reign, or in King Charles 
the Second’s ; but I have heard that 
its most comely parts had been swal- 
lowed up by an Earthquake, and, 
when I remember it, the Main thor- 
oughfare was like nothing half so much 
as the Fag End of Kent Street in the 
Borough, where the Broom-men live. 
As for public scavengers — humane at 
least — there were none ; for that salu- 
tary practice of putting rebellious 
Blacks into chain-gangs, and making 
them sweep the streets, — which might 
be well done in London with Pick- 
pockets and the like trash, to their 
souls’ health and the benefit of the 
Body politic, — did not then obtain. 
The only way of clearing the offal was 
by the obscene birds that flew down 
from the hills ; Messieurs the land- 
crabs, who were assuredly the best 
scavengers of all, not stirring beyond 
the palisadoes. Some things were 
very cheap, but others inordinately 
dear. Veal was at a prodigious price; 
and ’twas a common saying, that you 
could buy Four children in England 
cheaper than you could one calf in 
Jamaica. But for the products and 
dishes of the colony, which I have 
elsewhere hinted at, all was as low- 
priced as it was abundant. What 
droll names did they give, too, unto 
their fish and flesh and fowl ! How 
often have you in England heard of 
Crampos, Bonettas, Ringrays, Albac- 
oras, and Sea-adders, among fish ; of 
Noddies and Boobies and Pitternells 
and Sheerwaters among birds ? And 
Calialou Soup, and Pepperpot to break 
your Fast withal in the morning, and 
make you feel, ere you got accustomed 
to that Fiery victual, like a Salaman- 
der for some hours afterwards. 

Now and then also, with some other 
young white folks with whom I had 
stricken up acquaintance, — clerks, 
storekeepers, and the like, — would 
we seek out the dusky beauties of the 


town in their own quarters, and shake 
a leg at their Dignity Routs, Blacka- 
moor Drums, and Pumpkin-Faced As- 
semblies, or by what other name the 
poor Black wretches might choose to 
call their uproarious merry-makings. 
There, in some shed, all hustled to- 
gether as a Moorfields Sweetener does 
luck in a bag, would be a mob of 
men and women Negroes, all dressed 
in their bravest finery, although little 
of it was to be seen either on their 
Backs or their Feet, the Head being 
the part of their Bodies which they 
chiefly delight to ornament. Such 
ribbons and owches, such gay-colored 
rags and blazing tatters, would they 
assume, and to the Trips and Rounds 
played to them by some Yarlet of a 
black fiddler, with his hat at a prodi- 
gious cock, and mounted on a Tub, like 
unto the sign of the Indian Bacchus at 
the Tobacconist’s, would they dance 
aud stamp and foot it merrily — with 
plenty of fruit, salt fish, pork, roasted 
plantain, and so forth, to regale them- 
selves withal, not forgetting punch and 
sangaree — quite forgetful, poor mer- 
curial wretches, for the time being of 
Fetters and the Scourge and the Driver 
that would hurry them to their dire 
labor the morrow morn. Surely there 
never did exist so volatile, light-spir- 
ited, feather-brained a race as these 
same Negro Blacks. They will whistle 
and crack nuts, aye and dance and 
sing to the music of the Fiddle or the 
Banjar an hour after the skin has 
been half flayed off 1 their backs. They 
seem to bear no particular Malice to 
their Tormentors, so long as their 
weekly rations of plantain, yam, or 
salt fish, be not denied them, and that 
they have Osnaburgs enow to make 
them shirts and petticoats to cover 
themselves withal. Give them but 
these, and their dance at Christmas 
time, with a kind word thrown to them 
now and again, just as you would fling 
a marrow-bone to a dog, and they will 
get along well enough in slavery-, 
almost grinning at its Horrors and 
making light of its unutterable Woes. 
I never saw so droll a people in my 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


life. Nor is it the less astonishing 
thing about them that, beneath all this 
seeming lightheartedness and jollity, 
there often lies smouldering a Fire of 
the Fiercest passion and blackest re- 
venge. The dark-skinned fellow who 
may be flapping the flies away from 
you in the morning, and bearing your 
kicks and cuffs as though they were 
so many cates and caresses, may, in 
the evening, make one in a circle of 
Heathen monsters joined together to 
listen to the Devilish Incantations of 
the Obeah man, — to mingle in cere- 
monies most hideous and abominable, 
and of which perhaps that of swearing 
eternal Hatred to the White Race over 
a calabash that is made out of the 
skull of a new-born Babe, and filled 
with Dirt, Rum, and Blood mixed 
together, is perchance the least horrid. 
And yet I don’t think the unhappy 
creatures are by nature either treach- 
erous, malicious, or cruel. ’Tis only 
when the fit seizes them. Like the 
Elephants, the idea suddenly comes 
over them that they are wronged — 
that ’tis the White Man who has 
wrought them all these evils, and that 
they are bound to Trample him to 
pieces without more ado. But ’tis all 
done in a capricious, cobweb-headed 
manner ; and on the morrow they are 
as quiet and good-tempered as may 
be. Then, just as suddenly, will 
come over them a fit of despondency, 
or dark, dull, brooding Melancholy. 
If they are at sea, they will east them- 
selves into the waves and swim right 
toward the sharks, whose jaws are 
yawning to devour them. If they are 
on dry land, they will, for days to- 
gether, refuse all food, or worse still, 
go dirt-eating, stuffing themselves with 
.day till they have the mat d’estomac, 
and so die : this mal, of which our 
English stomach-ache gives no valid 
translation {which must prove my ex- 
cuse for placing here a foreign word), 
being, with the Yaws, their most fre- 
quent and fatal complaint. Gf a less 
■perplexing nature also are their fits 
of the Sulks, when, for more than a 
week at a time, they will remain 


wholly mute and intractably obstinate, 
folding their arms or squatting on 
their hams, and refusing either to 
move or speak, whatsoever threats 
may be uttered or enforced against 
them, and setting no more store by 
the deep furrowing cuts of the Cow- 
hide whip (that will make marks in 
a deal board, if well laid on, the which 
I have often seen) than by the buz- 
zings of a Shambles Fly. They had 
many ways of treating these fits of the 
sulks, in my time, all of them cruel, 
and none of them successful. One 
was, to set the poor wretches in the 
stocks or the bilboes, rubbing chillies 
into their eyes to keep them from 
going to sleep. Another was a dose 
of the Fire-cane, as it was called, 
which was just a long paddle, or slen- 
der oar, pierced with holes at the 
broadest part, with the which the 
patient being belabored, a blister on 
the flesh rose to each hole of the Pad 
die. A curious method, and one 
much followed ; but the Negroes sulk- 
ed all the more for it. There was 
a Dutch woman from Surinam, who 
had brought with her from that plan- 
tation of the Hollanders that highly 
Ingenious Mode of Torment known as 
the u Spanso Bocko.” The manner 
of it was this. You took your Negro 
and tied him wrists and ankles, so 
bending him into a neat curve. Then, 
if his spine did not crack the while, 
you thrust a stake between his legs, 
and having thus comfortably Trussed 
him, pullet fashion, you laid him on 
the ground, one side upwards, and at 
your leisure scarified him from one 
cheek to one heel with any instrument 
of Torture that came handy. Then 
he (*or she, it did not at all matter in 
the Dutchwoman’s esteem), being one 
gore of welts and gashes, was thought 
to be Done enough on one side, and 
consequently required Doing t’other. 
So one that stood by to help just took 
hold of the stake and turned the Human 
Pullet over, and then he was so thoiv 
oughly basted as sometimes to be 
Done a little too much, often dying on 
the spot from that Rib wasting. Oh, 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


it was rare sport ! I wonder where- 
abouts in the nethermost Hell the 
cunning Dutchman is now who first 
devised this torment ; also the Dutch- 
woman who practised it? I can fancy 
Signor Beelzebub and his Imps taking 
a keen delight in their application of 
the Spanso Bocko. The which I 
never knew it cure a Negro of the 
sulks. They would force back their 
tongues into their gullets while the 
torment was going on, determined not 
so much as to utter a moan, and, hav- 
ing a peculiar Art that way, brought 
by them from their own country, would 
often contrive to suffocate themselves 
and Expire. Their own country ! 
That is what one of the miserable 
beings said when, being threatened 
with torment of a peculiar, outrageous 
nature, he flung himself into a caul- 
dron of boiling sugar, and was scalded 
to death on the instant. Let me not 
omit to mention while I am on this 
chapter of Brutality — wreaked by 
Christian men upon poor Heathen 
savages, for many of them were not 
many Aveeks from Guinea and Old 
Calabar, where they had been wor- 
shipping Mumbo Jumbo, and making 
Avar upon one another in their OAvn 
Pagan fashion — that I have knoAvn 
Planters even more refined in their 
cruelty. They would make their 
slaves drink salt water, and then set 
them out in the hot sun, tied to the 
outside posts of the Piazza. The end 
of that was, that they went Raving 
Mad, gnaAving their Tongues and poor 
blubberous Lips to pieces before they 
died. Another genius, Avho was a 
proficient in his Humanities, and quite 
of a classic frame of mind in his 
cruelties, bethought himself of a mode 
of Torture much practised among the 
Ancient Persians, and so must needs 
smear the body of an unhappy Negro 
all over with molasses. Then, bind- 
ing him fast to a stake in the open, 
the flies and mosquitoes got at him, — 
for he Avas kept there from one morn- 
ing until the next, — and he presently 
gave up the Ghost. But nothing that 
I ever saAV or heard of during the time 


of my living in the Western Indies, 
could equal the Romantic Torture, not 
so much invented as imported, by a 
Gentleman Merchant who had lived 
among the islands of the Grecian 
Archipelago, and Avhose jocose humor 
it was to imprison his women slaves 
in loose garments of leather, very 
tightly secured, hoAvever, at the wrists, 
neck, and ankles. In these same gar- 
ments, before fastening round the 
limbs of the victims, one or more In- 
furiated cats Avere introduced ; the 
which ferocious animals, playfully dis- 
porting themselves in their attempt to 
find a point of egress, would so up 
and tear, and mangle, and lacerate, 
with their Terrible claAvs, the flesh of 
the sutferers, that not all the Brine- 
washing or pepper-pod-rubbing in the 
Avorld, afterwards humanely resorted 
to on their release from their leathern 
sepulchre, Avould save them from mor- 
tification. There Avas a completeness 
and gusto about this Performance that 
always made me think my Gentleman 
Merchant from the Greek Islands a 
very Great Mind. The mere vulgar 
imitations of his Process Avhich, in 
times more Modern, I have heard of, 
— such as taking an angry cat by the 
tail and draAving its claws all abroad 
doAvn the back of a Negro strapped on 
to a plank, so making a map of all the 
rivers in Tartarus from his neck to his 
loins — are, in my holding, beneath 
contempt. There is positive genius 
in that idea of shutting up the cats in 
a hide-bound prison, and so letting 
them work their own wills on the inner 
walls ; and I hope my Gentleman 
Merchant has as warm a niche in 
Signor Beelzebub’s Temple of Fame, 
as the Great Dutch Philosopher Avho 
first dreamt of the Spanso Bocko. 

Before I left the island of Jamaica, 
there befell me an adventure Avhich 
I may briefly narrate. It being the 
sickly season and very few ships in 
port, Maum Buckey’s business was 
somewhat at a stand-still, and Avith 
little difficulty I obtained from her a 
fortnight’s holiday. I might have 
spent it with no small pleasure, and 
93 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


even profit, at one of her up-country 
plantations, or at the Estate of some 
other Planter ; for I had friends and 
to spare among the white Overseers 
and Bookkeepers ; and although the 
Gentry — that is to say, the Enriched 
Adventurers, who deemed themselves 
such — were of course too High and 
Mighty to associate with one of my 
Mean Station, I was at no loss for 
companions among those of my own 
degree. So bent upon a frolic, and 
being by this time a good Rider and a 
capital shot, I joined a band of wild 
young Slips like myself, to go up the 
country hunting the miserable Negroes 
that had Marooned, as it was called. 
These Maroons were runaway slaves 
who had bid a sudden good-by to 
Bolts and shackles, whips and rods, 
and shown their Tyrants a clean pair 
of heels, finding their covert in the 
dense jungles that covered the moun- 
tain slopes, where they lived on the 
■wild animals and birds they could 
shoot or snare, and sometimes making 
descents to the nearest plantations, 
thence to carry off cattle, ponies, or 
pigs, or whatever else they could lay 
their felonious hands, upon. These 
were the Blacks again, you will say, 
with a vengeance, and at many Thous- 
and Miles’ distance from Chari wood 
Chase ; but those poor varlets of 
Deerstealers in England never dreamt 
of taking Human Life, save when de- 
fending their own, in a fair stand-up 
Fight ; whereas the Maroons had no 
such scruples, and spared neither age, 
nor sex, nor Degree — that had a 
white skin — in their bloodthirsty fren- 
zy. The Savage Indians in the Ameri- 
can plantations, who will swoop down 
on some peaceful English settlement, 
slaying, scalping, and Burning up 
men, women, and children, — with 
other Horrors and Outrages not to be 
described in decent terms, — are just 
on a par with these black Maroons* 
Now and again would be found among 
them some Household Runaways, or 
Field Hands born into slavery on the 
Plantations, — and these were most 
useful in acting as spies or scouts ; 

94 


but as a rule the Head Men and Bold- 
est Villains among the Maroons were 
Savage Negroes, just fresh from Af- 
rica, on whom the bonds of servitude 
had sate but for a short time, and who 
in the jungle were as much at Home 
as though they were in their native 
wilds again. Of great stature, of 
prodigious strength, amazing Agility, 
and astounding natural cunning, these 
creatures were as ferocious as Wild 
Baboons that had lived among civi- 
lized mankind just long enough to 
learn the Art of firing off a Gun and 
wielding a cutlass, instead of bran- 
dishing a Tree-branch or heaving a 
Cocoa-nut. They were without Pity ; 
they were without knowledge that 
theirs was a cutthroat, nay a cannibal 
trade. The white man had made war 
on them, and torn them from their 
Homes, where they were happy enough 
in their Dirt and Grease, their War- 
paint, and their idolatrous worship of 
Obeah and Bungey. ’Twas these 
Men-monsters that we went to hunt. 
The Planters themselves were some- 
what chary of dealing with them ; for 
the cruelties which the Maroons in- 
flicted on those who fell into their 
power were Awful alone to contem- 
plate, much more so to Endure ; but 
they were glad enough when any 
gang of young Desperadoes of the 
meaner white sort — which, speaking 
not for myself, I am inclined to believe 
the Meanest and most Despicable of 
any sort or condition of Humanity — 
would volunteer to go on a Maroon 
Hunt. We were to have a Handsome 
Recompense, whether our enterprise 
succeeded or failed ; but were likewise 
stimulated to increased exertion by 
the covenanted promise of so many 
dollars — I forget how many now — for 
every head of a Maroon that we 
brought at our saddlebows to the 
place of Rendezvous. And so we 
started one summer morning, some 
twenty strong, all young, valiant, and 
not over-scrupulous, armed, I need 
scarcely say, to the teeth, and mounted 
on the rough but fleet ponies of the 
country. 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


A train of Negroes on whom we 
could Depend — that is, by the strict 
application of the law of Fear, not 
Kindness, and who stood in such 
Terror of us, and of our ever-ready 
Thongs, Halters, Pistols, and Cut- 
lasses, as scarcely to dare call their 
souls their own — followed us with 
Sumpter mules well laden with pro- 
visions, kegs of drink, both of water 
and ardent, and additional ammuni- 
tion. I was full of glee at the pros- 
pects of this Foray, vowed that it 
was a hundred times pleasanter than 
making out Maum Buckey’s washing 
books, and hearing her scold her 
laundry-wenches ; and longed to prove 
to my companions that the Prowess 
I had shown at twelve — aye, and 
before that age, when I brained the 
Grenadier with the Demijohn — had 
not degenerated now that I was turned 
sixteen, and far away from my own 
country. So we rode and rode, who 
but we, and dined gaily under spread- 
ing trees, boasting of the brave deeds 
we would do when we had tracked 
the black Marooning Vagabonds to 
their lair. At which those Negro 
servants upon whom we could depend 
grinned from ear to ear, and told us 
in their lingo that they “ oped we 
would sav Dam black negar tief out, 
and burn his Fader like canebrake.” 
“ ’Tis strange,” I thought “ that these 
creatures have not more compassion 
for their fellows whom we are hunt- 
ing.” To be sure, they were mostly 
of the Household breed, between 
whom and the fresh-imported Negroes 
held to field-service there is little sym- 
pathy. It escaped me to tell you that 
we had with us yet more powerful and 
Trustworthy auxiliaries than either 
our arms, our Horses, or our servants ; 
being none other than nine couples of 
ferocious Bloodhounds, of a breed 
now extinct in Jamaica, and to be 
found only at this present moment, I 
believe, in the island of Cuba. These 
animals, which were of a terrible 
Ferocity and exquisitely keen scent, 
were kept specially for the purpose of 
hunting Maroons — such are the En- 


gines which Tyrannical Slavery is 
compelled to have recourse to, — and 
were purposely deprived of food be- 
yond that necessary for their bare 
sustenance, that they might more 
fully relish the Recompense that 
awaited them when they had hunted 
down their prey. 

Gaily we went on our Road re- 
joicing, now by mere bridle-paths, 
and now plunging our hardy little 
steeds right through the bristling 
underwood, when there burst upon us 
one of those terrible Tornadoes, or 
Tempests of wind and rain, so com- 
mon in the Western Indies. The water 
came down in great solid sheets, 
drenching us to the skin in a moment; 
the sky was lit up for hundreds of 
miles round by huge blasts of lurid fire ; 
the wind tore great branches off trees, 
and hurled them across the bows of 
our saddles, or battered our faces 
with their soaked leaves or sharp 
prickles. The very Dogs were blinded 
and baffled by this tremendous protest 
of nature ; and in the very midst of 
the storm there broke from an ambus- 
cade a band of Maroons, three times 
as strong as our own, who fell upon 
us like incarnate Demons as they 
were. Our hounds had found their 
scent long before, — just after dinner, 
indeed, — and we had been following 
it for some two hours ; — even now it 
was Reeking close upon us, but we 
little deemed how Near. I suppose 
that those Negro Rascals, whom we 
had trusted so implicitly, and on 
whom we thought that we could De- 
pend so thoroughly, had Betrayed us. 
This was the second time in my short 
Life that I had fallen into an Ambus- 
cade ; and Lo ! each time the u Blacks ” 
had been mixed up with my misad- 
venture. 

These naked Maroons eared noth- 
in" about the Storm, whose torrents 
ran off their well-oiled carcasses like 
water off a Duck’s back. There was 
a very Devil of a fight. ’Twas every 
one for himself, and the Tempest for 
us all. The Runaways were well 
armed, and besides could use their 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


teeth and nails to better advantage 
than many a doughty Fighting man 
can use his weapons, and clawed and 
tore at us like Wild Beasts. I doubt 
not we should have got the worst of 
it, but that we were Mounted — and a 
Man on horseback is three times a 
Footman in a Iland-to-Hand encoun- 
ter ; and again, that our good friends 
the bloodhounds, that had been scared 
somewhat at the outset, recovered 
their self-possession, and proceeded 
each to pin his Maroon, and to rend 
liim to pieces with great deliberation. 
In the end, that is to say, after about 
twenty seven minutes’ sharp tussling, 
Dogs, Horses, and Men were victori- 
ous ; and, as we surveyed 'the scene 
of our Triumph, the storm had spent 
its fury. The black clouds cleared 
away as suddenly as they had darkled 
upon us ; the Golden Sun came out, 
and the dreadful scene was lit up in 
Splendor. Above, indeed, it was all 
Beauty and Peace, for Nature cannot 
be long Angry. The trees all seemed 
stemmed and sprayed with glistening 
jewels; the moisture that rose had 
the tints of an hundred Rainbows ; 
the long grass flashed and waved ; the 
many birds in the boughs began to 
sing Hymns of Thankfulness and Joy. 
But below, ah, me ! what a Dreadful 
scene of blood and Carnage, and De- 
moniac revenge, there was shown ! 
Of our band we had lost three killed ; 
five more were badly Wounded ; and 
there was not one of us but had some 
Hurt of greater or lesser seriousness. 
W e had killed a many of the Maroons ; 
and the two or three that had escaped 
with Life, albeit most grievously 
gashed, were speedily put out of their 
misery. Had we been seeking for 
Runaway house-servants, we might 
have taken prisoners ; but with a wild 
African Maroon this is not serviceable. 
The only thing that you can do with 
him, when you catch him, is to kill 
him. 

The Dead Bodies of our unfortunate 
companions were laid across the Sump- 
ter mule’s back ; but when we came 
to look for our train of dependable 


Negroes, we found that all save three 
bad fled. These did so very strongly 
protest their Innocence, and plead 
their abiding by us as a proof thereof, 
that I felt half inclined to hold them 
blameless. There were those among 
us, however, who were of a far dif- 
ferent opinion, and were for lighting 
a fire of branches and Roasting them 
into confession. But there was a 
Scotch gentleman among us by the 
name of Macgillicuddy, who, being 
of a Practical turn (as most of his 
countrymen are, and, indeed, Edin- 
borough in Scotland is about the most 
Practical town that ever I was in), 
pointed out that we were all very 
Tired, and needed Refreshment and 
Repose; that the task of Torturing 
Negroes gave much trouble and con- 
sumed more time ( u Aiblins it’s douce 
wark,” quoth the Scotch gentleman) ; 
that all the wood about was sopped 
with wet (and a “ Dry Roast’s best,” 
said the Scotch Gentleman) ; and 
finally, that the thing could be much 
better done at home, where we had 
proper Engines and Instruments for 
inflicting Exquisite Agony, and proper 
Slaves to administer the same. So 
that for the nonce, and for our own 
Convenience, we were Merciful, and 
promised to defer making necessary 
Inquisition, by means of Cowhide, 
Tamarind-bush, and Fire-cane, until 
our return to the Rendezvous. 

I should tell you that I got a Hurt 
in my hand from a kind of short 
Chopper or Tommyhawk that one of 
the Savages carried. ’Twas fortu- 
nately my left hand, and seeming but a 
mere scratch, I thought little or noth- 
ing about it. But at the end of the 
second day it began to swell and 
swell to a most alarming size and 
tumorous discoloration, the inflamma- 
tion extending right up my arm, even 
to my shoulder. Then it was agreed 
on all sides that the blade of the 
Tommyhawk with which I had been 
stricken must have beeu anointed 
with some subtle and deadly Poison, 
of the which not only the Maroons 
but the common Household and Town 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


Negroes have many, preparing them 
themselves, and obstinately refusing, 
whether by hope of Reward or fear 
of punishment, to reveal the secret 
of their components to the Whites. 
I had to rest at the nearest Plantation 
to our battle-field ; and the Planter — 
who had been a captain in the Cheva- 
lier de St. George’s service (the old 
one), that had come out here, after 
the troubles of 1715, a Banished 
man, but had since been Pardoned, 
and had taken to Planting, and grown 
Rich — was kind enough to permit 
me to be taken into his house and 
laid in one of his own Guest cham- 
bers, where I was not only tended by 
his own Domestics, but was sometimes 
favored with the Attention and sym- 
pathy of his angelic Wife, a young 
woman of most charming countenance 
and lively manners, most cheerful, 
pious, and Humane, taking great care 
of her slaves, physicking them fre- 
quently, reading to them little paper 
books written by persons of the Non- 
conforming persuasion — a kind of 
doctrine that I never could abide, — 
and never suffering them to be whipped 
upon a Sunday. However, I grew 
worse ; whereupon one Mr. Sprague, 
that set up for surgeon, but was more 
like a Boatswain turned Landsman 
than that, or than a Horse, came to 
me, and was for cutting off my arm, 
to prevent mortification. There were 
two obstacles in the way of this opera- 
tion’s performance ; the first being 
that Mr. Sprague had no proper in- 
struments by him beyond a fleam and 
a syringe, with which, and with how- 
ever good a will, you can scarcely 
sever a Man’s limb from his Body ; 
and the next, that Mr. Sprague was 
not sober. Love for a young widow 
had driven him to drinking, it was 
said ; but I think that it was more the 
Love of Liquor to which his bibulous 
backslidings were owing. ’Twas 
lucky for me that he had nor saw nor 
tourniquet with him. It is true that 
he departed in quest of some Carpen- 
ter’s Tools, which he declared would 
do the job quite as well ; but, again 
7 « 


to my good luck, the carpenter was as 
Rare a pottlepot as he, and they two 
took to boiling rum in a calabash 
and drinking of it, and smoking of 
Tobacco, and playing at Skimming 
Dish Hob, Spie the Market, Shove 
half-penny, Brag, Put, and Dilly- 
Dally, and other games that reminded 
them of the old country, for days and 
nights together ; so that the old Negro 
woman that belonged to the carpen- 
ter, seeing them gambling and drink- 
ing in the morning just as she had 
left them drinking and gambling the 
overnight, stared with amazement, 
like a Mouse in a Throwster’s mill. 
And by the time they had finished 
their Rouse I was, through Heaven’s 
kindness and the sagacity of a Negro 
nurse named Cubjack, cured. This 
woman, it is probable, knew the secret 
of the Poison from the bitter effects 
of which I was suffering. At all 
events, she took me in hand, and by 
warm fomentations and bathings, and 
some outward applications of herbs 
and anointed bandages, reduced the 
swelling and restored my hand to its 
proper Form and Hue. At the end 
of the week I was quite cured, and 
able to resume my journey back to 
Kingston. I did not fail to express 
my gratitude to the hospitable Planter 
and his Lady, and I gave the Nurse 
Cubjack half a dollar and a silver 
tobacco-stopper that had been pre- 
sented to m'd by Maum Buckey. 

As a perverse destiny would have 
it, this Tobacco-stopper, this harmless 
trinket, was the very means of my 
losing my situation, and parting in 
anger from my Pumpkin-faced Pat- 
roness. Although I was, even at the 
present dating, but a raw lad, she took 
it into her head to be jealous of me, 
and all about this silver pipe-stopper. 
She vowed I had given it away to 
some Quadroon lass up country ; she 
would not hearken to my protest of 
having bestowed it upon the nurse 
who had saved my life ; and indeed 
when, at my instance, inquiries were 
made, Cubjack’s replies did not in any 
way bear out my statement. The 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


unhappy creature, who had probably 
sold my Tobacco-stopper for a few 
joes, or been deluded out of it by the 
Obeah Man, and was afraid of being 
flogged if discovery were made thereof, 
positively denied that I had given her 
anything beyond the half-dollar. You 
see that these Negroes have no more 
idea of the pernicious quality of the 
Sin of Lying, than has a white Euro- 
pean shopkeeper deluding a Lady into 
buying of a lustring or a paduasoy ; 
and see what similar vices there are 
engendered among savages and Chris- 
tian folks by opposite causes. 

We had a fearful war of words 
together, Maum Buckey and myself. 
She was a bitter woman when vexed, 
and called me “ beggar buckra,” 

“ poor white trash,” u tarn lily thief,” 
and the like. Whereat I told her 
plainly that I had no liking for her 
lackered countenance, and that she 
was a mahogany-colored, slave-driv- 
ing, old curmudgeon, that in England 
would be shown about at the fairs for 
a penny a peep. -At the which she 
screamed with rage, and threw at me 
a jug of sangaree. Heavy enough it 
was ; but the old lady had not so 
good au Aim as I had when I brained 
the Grenadier with the demijohn. 

We had little converse after that. 
There were some wages due, and 
these she paid me, telling mo that I 
might “ go to de Debbie,” and that 
if she ever saw me again, she hoped 
it would be to see me hanged. I 
could have got Employment, I doubt 
not, in Jamaica, or in some other of 
the islands ; but I was for the time 
sick of the Western Indies, and was 
resolved, come what might, to tempt 
my fortune in Europe. A desire to 
return to England first came over me ; 
nor am I ashamed to confess that, 
mingled with my wish to see my own 
country once more, was a Hope that 
I might meet the Traitorous Villain 
Hop wood, and tell him to his teeth 
what a false Deceiver I took him to 
be. You see how bold a lad can be 
when he has turned the corner of 

98 


sixteeen ; but ’twas always so with 
John Dangerous. 

Some difficulty, nay, considerable 
obstacles, I encountered in obtaining 
a ship to carry me . to Europe. The 
vindictive yellow woman, with whom 
(through no fault of my own, I de- 
clare) I was in disfavor, did so pursue 
me with her Animosity as to prejudice 
one Sea Captain after another against 
me ; and it was long ere any would 
consent to treat with me, even as a 
Passenger. To those of my own 
nation did she in particular speak 
against me with such virulence, that 
in sheer despite I abandoned for the 
time my intention of going to Eng- 
land, and determined upon making 
for some other part of Europe, where 
I might push my fortune. And there 
being in port early in the winter a 
Holland ship, named the Gebruder , 
which was bound for Ostend, I struck 
a bargain with the skipper of her, a 
decent man, whose name was Van 
Pjerboom, and prepared to leave the 
colony, in which I had passed over 
four years of my Eventful Life. Some 
friends who took an interest in me, — 
the “bright English lad,” as they 
called me, — and who thought I had 
been treated by Maum Buckey with 
some unnecessary degree of Harsh- 
ness, made up a purse of money for 
me, by which I was enabled to pay 
my Passage Money in advance, and 
lay in a stock of Provisions for the 
voyage ; for, save in the way of 
Schnapps, Cheeses, and Herrings, the 
Holland ships were at that time but 
indifferently well Found. When every- 
thing was paid, I found that I had 
indeed but a very small Surplus re- 
maining ; but there was no other way, 
and I bade adieu to the Island of 
Jamaica, as I thought, forever. 

Chapter the Twelfth, 
of what befell me ix the low 

COUNTRIES. 

I landed, after a long and tedious 
voyage, at the Town of Ostend, it 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


being the Spring time of the year 
1729, with Youth, Health, a strong 
Frame, and a comely Countenance (as 
they told me), indeed, but with just 
two Guineas in my pouch for all my 
Fortune. Many a Lord Mayor of 
London has begun the world, ’tis said, 
with a yet more slender Provision (I 
wonder what Harpy Hopwood had to 
begin with ?) and Eighteen pence would 
seem to be the average of Capital 
Stock for an Adventurer that is to 
heap up Riches. Still I seemed to 
have made my Start in Life’s Voyage 
a great many times, and to have been 
very near ending with it more than 
once — witness the Aylesbury Assizes. 
Thus I felt rather Despondency than 
Hope at being come almost to man- 
hood, and but to a beggarly Estate of 
Two-and-forty shillings. “ But,” said 
I, “ courage, Jack Dangerous ; thou 
hast strong legs and a valorous Stom- 
ach ; at least thou necdst not starve 
(bar cutpurses) for two-and-forty days ; 
thou hast a knowledge of the French 
tongue” (which I picked up from a 
Huguenot emigrant from Languedoc, 
who was a Barber at Kingston, and 
taught me for well-nigh nothing), u and 
art cunning of Fence. Be the world 
thine Oyster, as the Playactor has it, 
and e’en open it with thy Spadapoint.” 
In this not unwholesome frame of 
mind I came out of the ship Gebruder , 
and set foot on the Port with some- 
thing like a Defiance of Fortune’s 
scurvy tricks fermenting within me. 

The Ship Master recommended me 
to a very cleanly Tavern, by the sign 
of the Red Goose, kept in the Ganz- 
Straet by a widow woman named 
Giessens. ’Twas Goose here, Goose 
there, and Goose everywhere, so it 
seemed with this good Frau ; for she 
served Schiedam at the sign of the 
Goose, and she lived in Goose Street. 
She had herself a long neck and a 
round body, and flat feet, going wad- 
dling and hissing about the house, 
a-scolding of her maids, like any 
Michaelmas matron among the stub- 
ble; not to forget her children, of 
whom she had a flock, waddling and 


hissing in their little way too, and who 
were all as like goslings as Sherris is 
like Sack. Little would have lacked 
for her to give me hot roast goose to 
my dinner, and goose-pie for supper, 
and some unguent of goose-grease to 
anoint my Pate withal, had it chanced 
to be broken ; and truly if I had lived 
under the sign of the Goose for many 
days, I might have taken to waddling 
and hissing too in my own Generation, 
and have been in time as brave a goose 
as any of them. Here there was a 
civil enough company of Seafaring 
men, Mates, Pilots, Supercargoes, and 
the like, with some Holland traders, 
and, if I mistake not, a few Smugglers 
that had contraband dealings in Cam- 
brics, Steenkirks, Strong waters, and 
Point of Bruxelles. These last wor- 
thies did I carefully avoid ; for since 
my Boyish Mischances I had imbibed 
a wholesome fear of hurting the King’s 
Revenue, or meddling in any way with 
his Prerogative. “Well out of it, 
Jack Dangerous,” I said. “Touch 
not His Majesty’s Deer, nor His 
Majesty’s Customs, and there shall be 
no sense of a tickling in thy windpipe 
when thou passest a post that is like 
unto the sign of the Tyburn Tavern.” 
’Tis astonishing how gingerly a man 
will walk who has once been within an 
ace of dancing upon nothing. 

There is a mighty quantity of Sand 
and good store of Mud at Ostend, and 
a very comforting smell of fish ; and 
so the High Dutch gentry, who, poor 
souls, know very little about the sea, 
and see no more salt water from Life’s 
beginning unto its end than is contained 
within the compass of a pickling-tub, 
do use the place much for Bathing, 
and brag about their Dips and Floun- 
der ings, crying out, Die Zee ist mein 
Lust , in their plat Deutsch, as though 
they had all been born so many Por- 
poises. I would walk upon a morning 
much upon the Ramping-Parts, or 
Fortifications of the Town, watching 
whole caravans of Bathers, both of 
High and Low Dutch Gentry, coming 
to be dipped, borne into the Sea by 
sturdy Fellows that carried them like 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


so many Sacks of Coals, and who 
would Discharge them into shallows 
with little more Ceremony than they 
would use in shooting such a cargo of 
Fuel into a cellar. 44 When my Money 
is gone,” thought I, 44 1 may earn a 
crust by the like labor.” But then I 
bethought me that I was a Stranger 
among them ; that they might be 
Jealous of me ; and indeed, when I 
imparted my design to the Widow- 
woman Giessens, who was beholden 
to me, she said, for that I had warned 
her how poor a guest I was growing, 
she told me that much interest was 
needed to obtain one of these Bather's 
places — almost as much, forsooth, as 
is wanted to get the berth of a Tide- 
waiter in England, — and these rascals 
were always waiting for the tide. 
Something like a Patent had to be 
humbly sued for, and fat fees paid to 
Syndics and Burgomasters, for the 
fine Privilege of sousing the gentry in 
the Brine. The good woman offered 
me Credit till I should find employ- 
ment, and did so vehemently press a 
couple of Guilders upon me to defray 
my present charges, that I had not 
the heart to refuse, although I took 
care to advise her that my prospects 
of being able to repay her were as far 
off as the Cape of Good Hope. 

It chanced one morning that I was 
walking ont of the Town, by the side 
of the Sea below the fortified parts to 
the Norrard. ’Twas fine and calm 
enough, and there was not so much 
Swell as to take a Puppy off his swim- 
ming legs; but suddenly I heard a 
great Outcry and Hubbub, and per- 
ceived, some ten feet from me in the 
Water, the head of a Man convulsed 
with Terror, and who was crying out 
with all his might that he was Drown- 
ing, that he should never see his 
dear Mamma again, and that all his 
Estate would go to the Heir-at-Law, 
whom, as well as he could, for screech- 
ing and spluttering, he Cursed heartily 
in the English tongue. I wondered 
how he could be in such a Pother, 
seeing that lie was so close to shore, 
and that moreover there were those 


nigh unto him who could have helped 
him if they had had a Mind to it. Close 
upon him was a Fat gentleman in a 
clergyman’s cassock and a prodigious 
Fluster, who kept crying out, 44 Save 
him ! Save him ! ” but budged not a 
foot to come to his assistance himself; 
and but a dozen yards or so, was a 
Flemish Fellow, one of the Bathers, 
who, so far as I could make out from 
his shaking his head and crying out, 
44 nicht” and “Geld,” — the rest of Jiis 
lingo was Greek to me, — did refuse to 
save the Gentleman unless he had 
more Money given him. For these 
Bathing-men were a most Mercenary 
Pack. In a much shorter time than 
it has taken me to put this on Paper, 
I had off coat and vest, kicked off my 
shoes, and struck into the water. 
’Twas of the shallowest, and I had 
but to wade towards him who strug- 
gled. When I came anigh him, he 
must even catch hold of me, clinging 
like Grim Death or a Barnacle to 
the bottom of a Barge, very nearly 
Dragging me down. But I was hap- 
pily strong ; and so, giving him with 
my disengaged arm a sound Cuff un- 
der the ear, the better to Preserve his 
Life, I seized him by the waist with 
the other, and so dragged him up 
high, if not dry, unto the Sandy Shore. 
And a pretty sight he looked there, 
dripping and Shivering, although the 
Shun shone Brightly, and he well nigh 
Blue with Fright. 

What do you think the first words 
were that my Gentleman uttered as 
soon as he had got his tongue clear of 
Salt and Seaweed ? 

44 You villain!” he cries to me, 
44 you have assaulted me. Take wit- 
ness, Gentlemen, he hath stricken me 
under the Ear. I will have him in 
the King’s Bench for Battery. Mr. 
Hodge, you saw it ; and you leave 
me this day week for allowing your 
Patron to be within an inch of Drown- 
ing.” 

I was always of a Hot Temper, and 
this cavalier treatment of me after my 
Services threw me into a lvage. 

44 Why, you little half-boiled Shrimp,” 


100 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


I bawled out, “ I have a miud to 
clout you uuder ’totlier Ear, that Bro- 
thers may not complain of Favor, 
and e’en carry you to where I found 
you.” 

The Gentleman in the cassock began 
to break out in excuses, saying that 
his Patron would reward me, and 
that he was glad that an Englishman 
had been by to rescue a Person of 
Quality from such great Peril, when 
that Flanders Oaf yonder — the ex- 
tortionate villain — would not stir a 
finger to help him unless he had half 
a guilder over and above his fee. 

“ Let him dry and dress himself,” I 
said, in Dudgeon ; “ and if he be not 
civil to a Countryman, who is as good 
as he, I will kick him back to his Inn, 
and you too.” 

u A desperate youth ! ” murmured 
the Clergyman, as he handed his Patron 
a great bundle of towels ; “ and very 
meanly clad.” 

I walked away a few paces while 
the gentleman dried and dressed him- 
self. Had I obeyed the Promptings 
of Pride, I should have gone on my 
ways and left him to his likings ; but 
I was exceeding Poor, and thought it 
Foolish to throw away the chance of 
receiving what his Generosity might 
bestow upon me. The Bathing-Man, 
who had been already paid his Fee, 
had the impudence to come up and 
ask for more “Geld,” — for minding 
the gentleman’s clothes, as I gathered 
from the speech of the clergyman, 
who understood Flemish. He was, 
however, indignantly refused, and, not 
relishing, perchance, the likelihood 
of a scuffle with three Englishmen, 
straightway decamped. 

By and by the Gentleman was 
dressed, and a very smart appearance 
he made in a blue shag frock laced 
with silver, a yellow waistcoat bound 
with black velvet, green paduasoy 
breeches, red stockings, gold buckles, 
an ivory hilt to his sword, and a white 
feather in his hat. I have no mind to 
write out Taylor’s accompts, but I do 
declare this to be the exact Schedule of 
his Equipment. Under the hat, which 


had a kind of Sunday Marylabonne 
cock to it, there bulged out a mighty 
White Periwig of fleecy curls, for all 
the world like the coat of a Bologna 
Poodle Dog, and in the middle of his 
Wig, there peeped out a little hatchet 
face, with lantern jaws, and blue gills, 
and a pair of great black eyebrows, 
uuder which glistened a pair of in- 
flamed eyes. He was not above five 
feet three inches, and his fingers, very 
long and skinny, went to and fro under 
his Point ruffles like a Lobster’s Feel- 
ers. The Chaplain, who waited upon 
him as a Maid would on a lardy-dardy 
woman of Fashion, handed my Gen- 
tleman a very tall stick with a golden 
knob at the end on’t, and with this, 
and a laced handkerchief and a long 
cravat, which he had likely bought at 
Mechlin, and a Snuff-box in the lean 
little Paw that held not the cane, he 
looked for all the world like one of my 
Grandmother’s Footmen who had run 
away and turned Dancing Master. 

“ This, young man,” said the Chap- 
lain, making a low bow as he spoke 
to the comical Image before him, “ is 
Bartholomew Pinchin, Esquire, of 
Hampstead. Make your reverence, 
sirrah ! ” 

“ Make a reverence to a Rag-doll ! ” 
I answered, with a sneer. “ He hath 
left his twin brother beyond sea. I 
know him, and he is a Barbary Ape.” 

“ The rogue is insolent,” says B. 
Pinchin, Esq., clutching tighter at his 
tall cane, but turning very white the 
while. “ I must batoon him into better 
manners.” 

“ What ! ” I cried in a great voice, 
making a step towards him, for my 
blood was up. I would but have 
tweaked the little creature’s Ears ; but 
he, for a surety, thought I had a mind 
to Murder him. I do aver that he 
fell upon his knees, and with most 
piteous Accents and Protestations, en- 
treated me, for the sake of his Mamma, 
to spare his life, and he would give 
me all I asked. 

I was quite bewildered, and turning 
towards the Parson, asked if his mas- 
ter was Mad ; to which he made 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


answer* with some Heat, that he was 
no Master of his, but his Honored 
Friend and Gracious Patron ; where- 
upon the little Spark must go up to 
him, whimpering and cuddling about 
him, and beseeching him to save him 
from the Tall Rogue, meaning me. 

u Body o’ me, man,” I exclaimed, 
scarcely able to keep from laughing, 
“ I mean you no harm. I am a young 
Englishman, lately come from the 
Plantations, and seeking employment. 

I see you struggling yonder, and like 
to give up the ghost, and I pull you 
out; and then you call me Rogue and 
charge me with striking of you. Was 
it cramp or cowardice that made you 
bawd so ? Give me something to 
drink better manners to you, and I 
will leave you and this reverend gen- 
tleman alone.” 

The Parson bowed his head with a 
pleased look when I called him Rev-' 
erend and a Gentleman, and, in an 
under-tone, told his Patron that I was 
a civilly behaved youth, after all. 
But the Poltroon with the white wig 
W'as not out of his Pother yet. He 
had risen to his feet with a patch of 
sand on each knee, and as the Chaplain 
wiped it off with a kerchief, he blub- . 
bered out that I wanted to rob him. 

The Clergyman whispered in his 
ear — perhaps that I was a Dangerous 
looking Fellow, and might lose my 
temper anon to some tune : for my 
Whippersuapper approaches me, and, 
in a manner Civil enough, tells me 
that he is much obliged for what I had 
done for him. “ And you will take 
this,” says he. I will be shot if he 
did not give me an English Groat. 

“ You can readily get English coin 
changed in the town,” he observed 
with a smirk, as in sheer bewilder- 
ment I gazed upon this paltry doit. 

I was desperately minded to Fling 
it at him, knock him and the Chaplain 
down, and leave the precious pair to 
pick themselves up again, but I for- 
bore. “ Well,” I said, “ if that’s the 
value you put upon your life, I can’t 
grumble at your Guerdon. I suppose 
that shrivelled little carcass of yours 


isn’t worth more than fourpcnce. I’ll 
e’en change it in town, and buy four- 
pennyworth of Dutch cheese, and you 
shall have the parings for nothing to 
send to your Mamma as a gift from 
foreign parts. Good morning to you, 
my uoble Captain.” And so saying 
I w’alked away in a Fume of W rath 
and Contempt. 

I was idling, that same afternoon, 
along the Main street of Ostend very 
much in the Dumps, and thinking of 
going down to the Port to seek a cook’s 
place from some Ship Master, for I 
was not yet Qualified to engage as an 
Able-bodied Mariner, when I met the 
Chaplain again, this time alone, and 
coming out of a pastryman’s shop. I 
would have passed him, as holding 
both him and his master in Disdain, 
but he Arrested me, and beckoned 
me into an Entry, there to have some 
Speech. 

u My Patron is somewhat quick and 
hasty, and was uncommonly flustered 
by his mischance this morning,” quoth 
the Rev. Mr. Hodge. “Nor perhaps 
did he use you as liberally as he should 
have done. Here is a golden guilder 
for you, honest man.” 

I thanked him, and as I pouched it 
told him that I would have taken no 
Money at all for a service which every 
man is bound to render to his Fellow- 
creature, but that I was sorely pressed 
for Money. On this, he asked my 
name and belongings. The name I 
gave him, at the which he winced 
somewhat ; but of my history I did 
not care to enlighten him further be- 
yond broadly stating that I had come 
from the Plantations, where I had 
been used to keep Accompts, and that 
I was an Orphan, and had no friends 
in England, even if I possessed the 
means to return thither. 

“ I think I can find you a place,” 
the chaplain replied, when I had fin- 
ished. “’Twill not be a very hand- 
some one, but the work is little and 
light. Would it meet your purpose, 
now, to attend on a gentleman ? ” 

“ It depends,” I replied, “ on what 
kind of a Gentleman lie is.” 


102 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


“ A Gentleman of landed Estate,” 
quotli the parson, quite pat. u An 
English gentleman, now travelling for 
his Diversion, but will, in good time, 
settle down in England, to live on his 
Acres in a Handsome manner, and be 
a justice of peace, and of the Quorum.” 

“ Do you mean your Squire of 
Hampstead, yonder?” I answered, 
pointing my thumb over my shoulder, 
as though in the direction where I 
had met his Reverence and his Patron 
that morning. 

“ I do,” responds Mr. Hodge. 

“ Bartholomew Pinchin, of Hamp- 
stead, Esquire, eh ? ” I continued. 

“ Exactly so.” 

“ Then,” I went on, raising my 
voice, and giving a furious glance at 
my companion, “ I’ll see Bartholomew 
Pinchin boiled, and I’ll see Bartholo- 
mew Pinchin baked, and his Esquire- 
ship to boot, before I’ll be his servant. 
He, a mean, skulking, pinchbeck 
hound ! Tell him I’m meat for his 
master, and that he has no service, 
body or lip, of mine.” 

“ Tut, tut, you foolish lad,” said 
Mr. Hodge, not in the least offended. 
“ What a wild young colt it is, and 
how impatient ! For all your strap- 
ping figure, now, I doubt whether you 
are twenty years of age.” 

I answered, with something like a 
Blush, that I was not yet seventeen. 

“ There it is — there it is,” the Chap- 
lain took me, chuckling. “ As I 
thought. A mere boy. A very lad. 
Not come to years of discretion yet, 
and never will, if he goes on raging 
in this manner. Hearken to me, 
youngster. Don’t be such a fool as to 
throw away a good chance.” 

“ I don’t see where it is yet,” I ob- 
served sulkily yet sheepishly ; for there 
was a Good-natured air about the 
Chaplain that overcame me. 

“ But I do,” he rejoined. “ The 
good chance you have is of getting a 
comfortable place, with a smart liv- 
ery—” 

“ I won’t wear a livery,” I cried, in 
a heat. “ I’ll be no man’s lacquey ; 
I’m a gentleman.” 


“ So was Adam,” retorted Mr. 
Hodge, “ and the very first of the 
breed ; but he had to wear a livery of 
fig-leaves for all that, and so had his 
wife, Eve. Come, ’tis better to don a 
land-jerkin, and a hat with a ribbon 
to’t, and be a Gentleman’s Gentleman, 
with regular Wages and Vails, and 
plenty of good Victuals every day, 
than to be starving and in rags about 
the streets of a Flemish town.” 

u I’m not starving; I’m not in 
rags,” I protested, with my Proud 
stomach. 

“But you will be the day after to- 
morrow. The two things always go 
together. Come, my young friend, 
I’ll own that Bartholomew Pinchin, 
Esquire, is not generous.” 

“ Generous ! ” I exclaimed ; “ why 
he’s the meanest little huuks that ever 
skinned a flea for the hide and fat. 
Didn’t he give me fourpence this 
morning for saving his life ? ” 

“ And didn’t you tell him that his 
life wasn’t worth more than a groat ? ” 
asked the Chaplain, with a sly grin ; 
“ besides insulting him on the question 
of Dutch cheese (to which he has an 
exquisite aversion) , into the bargain ? ” 
“ That’s true,” I replied, van- 
quished by the Parson’s logic. 

“ There, then,” his Reverence went 
on. “Bartholomew Pinchin Esquire’s 
more easily managed than you think 
for. Do you prove a good servant, 
and it shall be my duty to make him 
show himself a good master to you. 
But I must have no further parley 
with you here, else these Papistical 
Ostenders will think that you are 
some Flemish lad (for indeed you have 
somewhat of a foreign air), and I a 
Lutheran Minister striving to convert 
you. Get you back to your Inn, good 
youth. Pay your score, if you have 
one, and if you have not, e’en spend 
your guilder in treating of your com- 
panions, and come to me at nine of 
the clock this evening at the Inn of 
the Three Archduchesses. Till then, 
fare you well.” 

It must be owned that h*s Rever- 
ence’s proposals were fair, and that 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, 


his conversation was very civil. As I 
watched him trotting up the Main 
Street, his Cassock bulging out be- 
hind, I agreed with myself that per- 
haps the most prudent thing I could 
do just at present would be to put my 
gentility in my pocket till better times 
came round. There was a Spanish 
Don, I believe, once upon a time, who 
did very nearly the same thing with 
his sword. 

At the appointed time I duly found 
myself at the sign of the Three 
Archduchesses, which was the bravest 
Hostelry in all Ostetid, and the one 
where all the Quality put up. I asked 
for Bartholomew Pinchin, Esquire, in 
the best French that I could muster ; 
whereupon the drawer, who was a 
Fleming, and, I think, spoke even 
worse French than I did, asked me 
if I meant the English Lord who had 
the grand suite of apartments looking 
on the courtyard. I was fit to die of 
laughing at first to hear the trumpery 
little Hampstead squire spoken of as 
a lord ; but Prudence came to my aid 
again, and I answered that such was 
the personage I came to seek ; and, 
after not much delay, I was ushered 
into the presence of Mr. Pinchin, 
whose Esquiredom — and proud enough 
he was of it — I may now as well 
Drop. I found him in a very hand- 
some apartment, richly furnished, 
drinking Burgundy with his chaplain, 
and with a pack of cards alongside 
the bottles, and two great wax candles 
in sconces on either side. But, as he 
drank his Burgundy, he ceased not to 
scream and whimper at the expense 
he was being put to in having such a 
costly liquor at his table, and scolded 
Mr. Hodge very sorely because he 
had not ordered some thin Bordeaux, 
or light Rhine Wine. 44 Pm drinking 
guineas,” he moaned, as he gulped 
down his Gobbets ; 44 it’ll be the ruin 
of me. A dozen of this is as bad as 
a Mortgage upon my Titmouse Farm. 
What’ll my mamma say ? I shall die 
in the poor-house.” But all this time 
he kept on drinking ; and it was not 
glass and glass about with him, I 


promise you, for he took at least three 
bumpers full to his Chaplain’s one, 
and eyed that Reverend personage 
grudgingly as he seized his opportu- 
nity, and brimmed up the generous 
Red Liquor in his tall-stemmed glass. 
Yet the Chaplain seemed in no way 
discountenanced by his scanty allow- 
ance, and I thought that, perchance, his 
Reverence liked not wine of Burgundy. 

They were playing a hand of piquet 
when I was introduced ; and they 
being Gentlefolks, and I a poor hum- 
ble Serving Man that was to be, I was 
bidden to wait, which I did very pa- 
tiently in the embrasure of a window, 
admiring the great dark tapestried 
curtains as they loomed in indistinct 
gorgeousness among the shadows. 
The hand of piquet was over at last, 
and Mr. Pinchin found that he had 
lost three shillings and sixpence. 

44 I can’t pay it, I can’t pay it,” he 
said, making a most rueful coun- 
tenance. 44 I’m eaten out of house 
and home, and sharped at cards be- 
sides. It’s a shame for a Parson to 
play foul, — I say foul, Mr. Hodge. 
It’s a disgrace to the cloth to bring 
your wicked card-cheating practices 
to devalise an English gentleman who 
is travelling for his diversion.” 

44 We’ll play the game over again, 
if you choose, Worthy Sir,” the 
Chaplain answers quite quietly. 

44 Yes, and then you’ll win seven 
shillings of me. You’ve sworn to 
bring me to beggary and ruin. I know 
you swore it when my mamma sent 
you abroad with me. Oh, why did I 
come to foreign parts with a wicked, 
guzzling, gambling, chambering Chap- 
lain, that’s in league with the very 
host and the drawers of this thieving 
inn against me — that burns me a 
guinea a night in wax candles, and 
has had a freehold farm out of me in 
Burgundy wine.” 

44 I’ve had but two glasses the entire 
evening,” the Chaplain pleaded, in a 
voice truly that was meek; but I 
thought that, even at the distance I 
stood from him, I could see the color 
rising in his cheek. 


104 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


“ Oh, you have, you have,” went 
on Squire Bartholomew, who, if not 
half Mad, was certainly more than 
ihree parts Muzzy ; u you’ve ruined 
me, Mr. Hodge, with your cards and 
your candles and your Burgundy, and 
Goodness only knows what else be- 
sides.” 

The Chaplain could stand it no 
longer, and rose in a Rage. 

“ I wish all the candles and the 
cards were down your throat,” he 
cried ; “ nearly all the wine is there 
already. I wish they’d choke you. 
I wish they were all in the pit of your 
stomach, and turned to hot burning 
coals. What shall I do with you, 
you cadaverous little jackanapes ? 
The Lout did well this morning — ” 
(I was the Lout, by your leave) “ to 
— to liken thee to one, for thou art 
more monkey than man. But for 
fear of staining my cassock, I’d — 
I’d — ” 

He advanced towards him with a 
vengeful air, clenching his fist, as 
well as I could see, as he approached. 
Surely there never was such a comi- 
cal character as this Bartholomew 
Pinehin. ’Tis the bare truth, that, 
as the enraged parson came at him, 
this Gentleman of broad acres drops 
down ^again on his marrow-bones, 
just as I had seen him on the sands 
in the morning ; and lifting up his 
little skinny hands towards the ceil- 
ing, begins yelling and bawling out 
louder than ever. 

“ Spare my life! spare my life ! ” 
he cried. “ Take my watch and 
trinkets. Take my Gold Medal of 
the Pearl of Brunswick Club. Take 
the diamond solitaire I wear in my 
great Steenkirk on Sundays. Go to 
my Banket’s, and draw every penny 
I’ve got in the world. Turn me out 
a naked, naked Pauper ; but oh, Mr. 
Hodge, spare my life. I’m young. 
I’ve been a sinner. I want to give a 
hundred Pounds to Lady Wacker- 
barth’s charity school. I want to do 
everybody good. Take my gold, but 
spare my life. Oh, you tall young 
man in the corner there, come and 


help an English gentleman out of the 
hands of a murtherous Chaplain.” 

“ Why, you craven cur, you,” put3 
in the Chaplain, bending over him 
with half-poised fist, yet with a kind 
of half-amusement in his features, 
“ don’t you know that the Tall young 
Man, as you call him, is the poor 
English lad who saved your worthless 
little carcass from drowning this morn- 
ing, and whom you offered to *ecom- 
pense with a Scurvy Groat.” 

“ I’ll give him forty pound, . will,” 
blubbered Mr. Pinchin, still on his 
knees. “ I’ll give him fifty pound 
when my Midsummer rents come in, 
only let him rescue me from the jaws 
of the roaring lion. Oh, my Mamma ! 
my mamma ! ” 

u Come forward, then, young man,” 
cried the Chaplain, with a smile of 
disdain on his good humored counten- 
ance, u and help this worthy and coura- 
geous gentleman to his legs. Don’t 
be afraid, Squire Barty. He won’t 
murder you.” 

I advanced in obedience to the 
summons, and putting a hand under 
either armpit of the Squire, helped 
him on to his feet. Then, at a nod of 
approval, I set him in the great arm- 
chair of Utrecht velvet. Then I 
pointed to the bottle on the table, and 
looked at Mr. Hodge, as though to 
ask whether he thought a glass of 
Burgundy would do the patient good. 

“ No,” said the Chaplain. “ He’s 
had enough Burgundy. He’d better 
have a flask of champagne to give him 
some spirits. Will you drink a flask 
of champagne, Squire?” he continued, 
addressing his patron, in a strangely 
authoritative voice. 

u Yes,” quoth the little man, whose 
periwig was all Awry, and who 
looked, on the whole, a most doleful 
figure, — “ yes, if you please, Mr. 
Hodge.” 

u Vastly pretty ! And what am I 
to have ? / think I should like some 

Burgundy.” 

u Anything,” murmured the dis- 
comfited Squire ; “ only spare my — ” 

“Tush! your life’s in no danger. 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


We'll take good care of it. And this 
most obliging English youth, — will 
your Honor oiler him no refreshment? 
What is he to have ? ” 

“ Can he drink beer ? ” asked the 
Squire, in a faint voice, and averting 
his head as though the having to treat 
me was too much for him. 

u Can you drink beer ? ” echoed the 
Chaplain, looking at me, but shaking 
his head meanwhile, as if to warn me 
not to consent to partake of so cheap 
a beverage. 

u It’s very cheap,” added Mr. Pinchin 
very plaintively. u It isn’t a farthing 
a glass ; and when you get used to it, 
it’s better for the inwards than burnt 
brandy. Have a glass of beer, good 
youth. Kind Mr. Hodge, let them 
bring him a glass of Faro.” 

a Hang your faro ! I don’t like it,” 
I said bluntly. 

“ What will you have, then ? ” 
asked the Squire, with a gasp of agony, 
and his head still buried in the chair- 
cushion. 

It seemed that the chaplain’s lips, 
as he looked at me, were mutely 
forming the letters WINE. So I 
put a bold front upon it, and said, — 
u Why, I should like, master, to 
drink your health in a bumper of right 
Burgundy with this good Gentleman 
here.” 

“ He will have Burgundy,” whim- 
pered Mr. Pinchin, half to the chair- 
cushion, and half to his periwig. 
“ He will have Burgundy. The rag- 
ged, tall young man will have Bur- 
gundy at eight livres ten sols the flask. 
Oh, let him have it, and let me die ! 
for he and the Parson have sworn to 
my Mamma to murder me and have 
my blood, and leave me among 
Smugglers, and Papistry, and Land- 
lords who have sworn to ruin me in 
waxen candles.” 

There was something at once so 
ludicrous, and yet so Pathetic, in the 
little man’s lamentations, that I scarcely 
knew whether to laugh or to cry. 
His feelings seemed so very acute, 
and he himself so perfectly sincere in 
his moanings and groauings, that it 


were almost Barbarity to jeer at him. 
The Chaplain, however, was, to all 
appearance, accustomed to these little 
Comedies ; for, whispering to me that 
it was all Mr. Pinchin’s manner, and 
that the young Gentleman meant no 
harm, he bade me bestir myself and 
hurry up the servants of the House to 
serve supper. So not only were the 
champagne and the Burgundy put on 
table, — and of the which there was 
put behind a screen a demiflask of the 
same true vintage for my own private 
drinking, — (“ And the Squire will be 
pleased, when he comes to Audit the 
score, to find that you have been con- 
tent with Half a bottle. ’Twill seem 
like something saved out of the Fire,” 
whispers the Chaplain to me, as I 
helped to lay the cloth), — not only 
were Strong Waters and sweet Liquors 
and cordials provided, especially that 
renowned stomachic the Maraschyno, 
of which the Hollanders and Flemings 
are so outrageously found, and which 
is made to such perfection in the Ba- 
tavian settlements in Asia, but a 
substantial Repast likewise made its 
appearance, comprising Fowl, both 
wild and tame, and hot and cold, a 
mighty pasty of veal and eggs baked 
in a Standing Crust, some curious 
fresh sallets, and one of potatoes and 
salted herrings flavored with garlic — 
to me most villanously nasty, but 
much affected in these amphibious 
Low Countries. So, the little Squire 
being brought to with a copious draught 
of champagne, — and he was the most 
weazened little Bacchus I ever knew, 
moistening his ever-dry throttle from 
mom until night, — he and the chaplain 
sate down to supper, and remained 
feasting until long past midnight. So 
far as the Parson’s part went, it might 
have been called a Carouse as well as 
a Feast, for his Reverence took his 
Liquor, and plenty of it, with a jovi- 
ality of Contentment the which it 
•would have done your Heart good to 
see, drinking “ Church and King,” 
and then “ King and Church,” so that 
neither Institution should have cause 
to grumble, and then giving the Army, 


10G 


the Navy, the Courts of Quarter Ses- 
sions throughout England, Newmarket 
and the horses, not forgetting the 
Jockeys, the pious memory of Dr. 
Sacheverell, at which the Squire 
winced somewhat, for he was a bitter 
Whig, with many other elegant and 
appropriate sentiments. In fact, it 
was easy to see that his reverence had 
known the very best of company, and 
when at one of the clock he called for 
a Bowl of Punch, which he had taught 
the Woman of the House very well 
how to brew, I put him down as one 
who had sate with Lords, — aye and 
of the Council too, over their Potations. 
But the Behavior of Bartholomew 
Pinchin, Esquire, was, from the be- 
ginning unto the end of the Regale, of 
a piece with his former extraordinary 
and Grotesque conduct. After the 
champagne, he essayed to sing a song 
to the tune of “ Cold and Raw,” but, 
failing therein, he began to cry. Then 
did he accuse me of having secreted 
the Liver Wing of a Capon, which, I 
declare, I had seen him devour not 
Five Minutes before. Then he had 
more Drink, and proposed successively 


as Toasts his Cousin Lady Betty Heel 
tap, daughter to my Lord Poddle ; a 
certain Madame Van Foorst, who I 
afterwards discovered to be the keeper 
of a dancing Ridotto on the Port at 
Antwerp ; then the Jungfrau, or serv- 
ing wench, that waited upon us, who 
had for name Babette ; and lastly his 
Mamma, whom, ten minutes after- 
wards, he began to load with Abuse, 
declaring that she wished to have her 
Barty shut up in a madhouse, in order 
that she might enjoy his Lands and 
Revenues. And then he fell to com- 
puting the cost of the supper, swearing 
that it would Ruin him, and making 
his old complaints about those eternal 
wax candles. Then, espying me out, 
he asks who I am, challenges me to 
fight with him for a Crown, vows that 
he will delate me to the English Resi- 
dent at Brussels for a Jacobite spy, 
tells me that I am an Honest Fellow, 
and, next to Mr. Hodge, the best 
friend he ever had in the world, and 
falls down at last stupefied. Where- 
upon, with the assistance of the Flemish 
Drawer, I carried my new master up 
to bed. 


107 


Chapter the Thirteenth. 

I MAKE THE GRAND TOUR, AND AC- 
QUIRE SOME KNOWLEDGE OF THE 

POLITE WORLD. 

For I had decided that he was to 
be my Master. “ I can bear with his 
strange ways,” I said to myself. 
“ John Dangerous has seen stranger, 
young as he is ; and it will go hard if 
this droll creature does not furnish 
forth some sport, aye and some Profit 
too, before long.” For now that I 
had put my Gentility in my pocket, I 
began to remember that Hay is a very 
pleasant and toothsome thing for Fod- 
der, to say nothing of its having a 
most pleasant odor, and that the best 
time to make hay was while the sun 
did shine. 

After I had assisted in conveying 
the Little Man to bed, I came down 
again to the Saloon, finding there Mr. 
Hodge, who was comforting himself 
with a last bumper of punch before 
seeking bed. 

“Well, Youth,” he accosts me, 
“ have you thought better of your 
surly, huffing manner of this morning, 
and this afternoon ? ” 

I told him that I had, and that I 
desired nothing better than to enter 
forthwith into the service of Bartholo- 
mew Pinchin, Esquire, of Hampstead. 

“ That’s well,” says his Reverence, 
nodding at me over his punch. “ Y ou’ve 
had your supper behind yon screen, 
haven’t you ? ” 

I answered, “Yes, and my Bur- 
gundy likewise.” 


“ That you mustn’t expect every 
day,” ho continues, “ but only on ex- 
traordinary occasions such as that of 
to-night. What the living is like, you 
have seen. The best of fish, flesh, and 
fowl, and plenty of it. As to your 
Clothes and your Wages, we will hold 
discourse of that in the morning ; for 
’twill take your Master half the morn- 
ing to beat you down a penny a Month, 
and quarrel with a Tailor about the 
cheapest kind of serge for your Livery. 
Leave it to me, however, and I’ll en- 
gage that you have no reason to com- 
plain either of one or the other. 
What did you say your name was, 
friend ? As for Recommendations, 
you have none to Give, and I seek not 
any from you. I will be content to 
take your character from your Face 
and Speech.” 

I began to stammer and bow and 
thank his Honor’s Reverence for his 
good opinion. 

“ Don’t thank me before you’re 
asked,” answers Mr. Hodge, with a 
grin. “ The academy of compliments 
is not held here. By your speech you 
have given every sign of being a very 
Saucy Fellow, and, to judge from your 
face, you have all the elements in you 
of a complete Scoundrel.” 

I bowed, and was silent. 

“But 'your name,” he pursued, 
“ that has escaped me.” 

I answered Respectfully that I had 
used to be called John Dangerous. 

“Tut, tut!” Mr. Hodge cried out 
hastily. “ Fie upon the name ! John 
is all very well ; but Dangerous will 


The Strange Adventures 

never do. Why, our Patron would 
think directly he heard it that you 
were bent on cutting his throat, or 
running away with his valise.” 

1 submitted, again with much re- 
spect, that it was the only name I 
had. 

‘•Well, thou art a straightforward 
youth,” said the Chaplain good-hu- 
moredly, “ and I will not press thee 
to take up an alias. John will serve 
excellently well for the present ; and, 
if more be wanted, thou shalt be John 
I). But understand that the name of* 
Dangerous is to remain a secret be- 
tween me and thee and the Post.” 

“ With all my heart,” I cried, “ so 
long as the Post be not a gallows.” 

“Well said, John D.,” murmured 
Mr. Hodge, upon whom by this time 
the punch had taken some little effect. 

“ A good Lad, John. And now thou 
mayst help me up to bed.” 

And so I did, for his Reverence had 
begun to stagger. Then a pallet was 
found for me high up in the Roof of 
the Inn of the Three Archduchesses. 

I forbore to grumble, for I had been 
used from my first going out into the 
world to Hard Lodging. And that 
night I slept very soundly, and dreamt 
that I was in the Great Four-post 
Bed at my Grandmother’s in Hanover 
Square. 

Never had a Man, I suppose, in 
this Mortal World, ever so droll a 
master as this Bartholomew Pinchin, 
of Hampstead, Esquire. ’Tis Tame, 
and may be Offensive, for me to be 
so continually telling that he wrote 
himself down Armiger , after my Prom- 
ise to forego for the future such reca- 
pitulation of his Title ; but Mr. Pinchin 
was himself never tired of dubbing 
himself Esquire, and you could scarcely 
be five Minutes in his company with- 
out hearing of his Estate, and his 
Mamma, and his Right to bear Arms. 
I, who was by birth a Gentleman of 
Long Descent, could not forbear smil- 
ing from time to time (in my Sleeve, 
be it understood, since I was a Servant 
at Wages to him) at his ridiculous 
Assumptions. And there are few 


of Captain Dangerous. 

% 

things more Contemptible, I take it, 
than for a Man of really good Belong- 
ings, and whose Lineage is as old as 
Stonehenge (albeit, for Reasons best 
known to Himself, he permits his 
Pedigree to lie Perdu), to hear an 
Upstart of Yesterday Bragging and 
Swelling that he is come from this or 
from that, when we, who are of the 
true Good Stock, know very well, but 
that we are not so ill-mannered as to 
say so, that he is sprung from Nothing 
at all. I think that if the Heralds 
Avere to make their Journeys now, as 
of Yore, among the Country Church- 
yards, and hack out from the Head- 
stones the sculptured cognizances of 
those having no manner of Right to 
them, the Stone-Masons about Hyde 
Park Corner would all make Fortunes 
from the orders that would be given 
to them for fresh Tombs. Not a 
mealy-mouthed Burgess now, whose 
great-grandfather sold stocking-hose 
to my Lord Duke of Northumberland, 
but sets himself up for a Percy ; not 
a supercilious Cit, whose Uncle mar- 
ried a cast-off waiting-woman from 
Arundel Castle, but vaunts himself 
on his alliance with the noble house 
of Howard ; not a starveling Scrivener, 
whose ancestor, as the playwright has 
it, got his Skull cracked by John of 
Gaunt for crowding among the Mar- 
shalmen in the Tilt Yard, but must 
pertly Wink and Snigger, and say that 
the Dukedom of Lancaster would not 
be found extinct if the Right Heir 
chose to come Forward. Since that 
poor young Lord of the Lakes was 
attainted for his part in the Troubles 
of the ’Fifteen, and lost his head on 
Tower Hill (his vast Estates going to 
Greenwich Hospital), I am given to 
understand that every man in Cumber- 
land or Westmoreland whose name 
happens to be Ratclitfe (I knew the 
late Mr. Charles Ratcliffe, that Suf- 
fered with a red Feather in his Hat, 
very well), must give himself out to 
be titular Earl of Derwentwater, and 
Importune the Government to reverse 
the Attainder, and restore him the 
Lands of which the Greenwich Com- 


The Strange Adventures 

missioncrs have gotten such a tight 
Hold ; and as for Grandchildren of 
the byblows of King Charles II. good 
lack ! to hear them talk of the “ Merry 
Monarch,” and to see them draw up 
their Eyebrows into the Stuart Frown, 
one would think that every Player- 
Woman at the King’s or the Duke’s 
House had beeu as favored in her 
time as Madam Eleanour Gwyn. 

Thus do I no more believe that 
Mr. Bartholomew Pinchin was cousin 
to Lady Betty Heeltap, or in any 
manner connected with the family of 
my Lord Poddle (and he was only 
one of the Revolution Peers, that 
got his coronet for Ratting at the right 
moment to King William III.), than 
that he was the Great Mogul’s Grand- 
mother. His gentlemanly extraction 
was with him all a Vain Pretence and 
silly outward show. It did no very 
great Harm, however. When the 
French adventurer Poirier asked King 
Augustus the Strong to make him a 
Count, what said his Majesty of War- 
saw and Luneville ? “ That I cannot 

do,” quoth he ; u but there is nothing 
under the sun to prevent thee from 
calling thyself a Count, if the humor 
so please thee.” And Count Poirier, 
by Self-Creation, he straightway be- 
came, and as Count Poirier was 
knouted to Death at Moscow for 
Forging of Rubles Assignats. Pin- 
chin was palpably a Plebeian ; but it 
suited him to be called and to call 
himself an Esquire ; and who should 
gainsay him ? At the Three Arch- 
duchesses at Ostend, indeed, they had 
an exceeding sensible Plan regarding 
Titles and Precedence for Strangers, 
which was found to answer admirably 
well. He who took the Grand Suite, 
looking upon the courtyard, was al- 
ways held to be an English lord. The 
tenant of the floor above him was 
duly esteemed by the Drawers and 
Chamberlains to be a Count of the 
Holy Roman Empire : a quiet gentle- 
man, who would pay a Louis a day 
for his changes, but was content to 
dine at the Public Table, was put 
down as a Baron or a Chevalier; 


of Captain Dangerous. 

those who occupied the rooms running 
round the galleries were saluted Mer- 
chants, or if they chose it, Captains ; 
but, in the gardens behind the Inn, 
there stood a separate Building, called 
a Pavilion, most sumptuously ap- 
pointed, and the Great Room hung 
with the Story of Susannah and the 
Elders in Arras Tapestry ; and he 
who would pay enough for this Pavil- 
ion might have been hailed as an 
Ambassador Plenipotentiary, as a 
Duke and Peer of France, or even as 
a Sovereign Prince travelling incog- 
nito, had he been so minded. For 
what will not Money do ? Take our 
English Army, for instance, which is 
surely the Bravest and the Worst 
Managed in the whole World. My 
Lord buys a pair of colors for the 
Valet that has married his Leman, 
and forthwith Mr. Jackanapes struts 
forth an Ensign. But for his own 
Son and Heir my Lord will purchase 
a whole troop of Horse ; and a Beard- 
less Boy, that a month agoue was 
Birched at Eton for flaAvs in his 
Grammar, will Vapor it about on the 
Mall Avith a Queue a la Rosbach, and 
a Long SavoixI trailing, behind him as 
a full-blown Captain of Dragoons. 

I believe Pinchin’s father to have 
been a Tailor. There is no harm in 
the Craft, honestly exercised ; but 
since the world first Began nine 
Tailors have made a Man ; and you 
cannot well see a knight of the shears 
Avithout asking in your OAvn mind 
Avhere he has left his Eight brethren. 
BartholomeAV Pinchin looked like a 
Tailor, talked like a Tailor, and 
thought like a Tailor. Let it not, 
however, be surmised that I have any 
mind to Malign the Useful Churls Avho 
make our Clothes. Many a time have 
I been beholden to the strong Faith 
and Generous Belief of a Tailor when 
I have stood in need of neAV Apparel, 
and have been under momentary Fam- 
ine of Funds for the Payment thereof. 
Those who are so ready to sneer at a 
Snip, and to cast Cabbage in his teeth, 
would do Avell to remember that there 
are Seasons in Life Avhen the Goose 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


(or rather he that wields it) may save, 
not only the Capitol, but the Soldier 
who stands on Guard within. How 
doubly Agonizing is Death when you 
are in doubt as to whence that Full 
Suit of Black needed on the Funeral 
Night will arrive ! What a tremor 
comes over you when you remember 
that this Day Week you are to be 
Married, and that your Wedding Gar- 
ment is by no means a certainty ! 
What a dreadful Shipwreck to your 
Fortune menaces you when you are 
bidden to wait on a Great Man who 
has Places to give away, and you find 
that your Velvet Coat shows the Cord ! 
’Tis in these Emergencies that the 
brave Confidence of the Tailor is dis- 
tilled over us like the Blessed Dew 
from Heaven; for Trust, when it is 
really needed, and opportunely comes, 
is Real Mercy and a Holy Tiling. 

About my master’s Wealth there 
was no doubt. Lord Poddlc, although 
a questionable . cousin of his, would 
have been glad to possess his spurious 
kinsman’s acres. I should put down 
the young Esquire’s income as at 
least Twenty Hundred Pounds a year. 
His father had been, it cannot be 
questioned, a Warm Man ; but I 
should like to know, if he was verita- 
bly, as his Son essayed to make out, 
a Gentleman, how he came to live in 
Honey-Lane Market, hard by Cheap- 
side. Gentlemen don’t live in Honey- 
Lane Market. ’Tis in Bloomsbury, 
or Soho, or Lincoln’s Inn, or in the 
parish of St. George, Hanover Square, 
that the real Quality have their habi- 
tations. I shall be told next that 
Gentlefolks should have their mansions 
by the Bun-House at Pimlico, or in 
the Purlieus of Tyburn Turnpike. 
No ; ’twas at the sign of the Sleeve- 
board, in Honey-Lane Market, that 
our Patrician Squire made his money. 
The estate at Hampstead was a very 
fair one, lying on the North side, 
Ilighgate way. Mr. Pinchiu’s Mam- 
ma, a Rare City Dame, had a Life 
Interest in the property, and, under 
the old Gentleman’s will, had a Right 
to a Whole Sum of Ten Thousand 


Pounds if she married again. Thus 
it was that young Bartholomew was 
always in an agony of Terror to learn 
that his mamma had been seen walk- 
ing on a Sunday afternoon in Gray’s- 
Inn Gardens, or taking Powdered 
Beef and Ratafia at the tavern in 
Flask Wall, or drinking of Syllabubs 
at Bellasise ; and by every post he 
expected to hear the dreadful intelli 
gence that Madame Pinchin had been 
picked up as a City Fortune by some 
ruffling Student of the Inns of Court, 
some Irish Captain, or some smart 
Draper that, on the strength of a new 
Periwig and a lacquered hilt to his 
Sword, passes for a Macarony. ’Tis 
not very romantic to relate, but ’tis no 
less a fact, that the Son and the 
Mother hated one another. You who 
have gone through the World and 
watched it, know that these sad un- 
natural loathings between Parents and 
Children, after the latter are grown 
up, are by no means uncommon. To 
me it seems almost impossible that. 
Estrangement and Dislike — nay abso- 
lute Aversion — should ever engender 
between the Mother and the Daughter, 
that as a Babe hath hung on her Paps 
(or should have been so Nurtured, for 
too many of our Fashionable Fine 
Dames are given to the cruelly Perni- 
cious Practice of sending their Infants 
to Nurse almost the very next Week 
after they are Born, thus Divorcing 
themselves from the Joys of Tender 
Affection, and drying up the very 
Source and Fontinel of Natural En- 
dearments ; from which I draw the 
cause of many of the harsh cold Hu- 
mors and Uncivil Vapors that do 
reign between the Great and their 
children). Y'ou may cry Ilaro upon 
me for a Cynic or Doggish Philoso- 
pher ; but I relate my Experiences, 
and the Things that have stricken my 
Mind and Sense. I do know Ladies 
of Quality that hate their Daughters, 
and would willingly Whip them, did 
they dare do so, Grown Women as 
they are, for Spite. I do know 
Fathers, Men of Parts and Rank, for- 
sooth, jealous of their Sons, and that 
11 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


have kept the Youngsters in the Back- 
ground, and even striven to Obscure 
their Minds that they might not cross 
the Paternal Orbit. And has it not 
almost passed into a proverb, that my 
Lord Duke’s Natural and most Invet- 
erate Enemy is my Lord Marquis, 
who is his Heir. But not to the W orld 
of Gold and Purple are these Jealousies 
and Evil Feelings confined. You shall 
find them to the full as Venomous in 
hovels, where pewter Platters are on 
the shelves, and where Fustian and 
Ilomespun are the only wear. Down 
in the West of England, where a 
worthy Friend of mine has an Estate, 
I know a Shepherd tending his flocks 
from sunrise — ay, and before the Sun 
gets up — until sundown. The honest 
man has but half-a-dozen shillings a 
week, and has begotten Fourteen 
Children. He is old now, and feeble, 
and is despised by his Progeny. He 
leads at Home the sorriest of Lives. 
They take his wages from him, and, 
were it not for a lump of fat Bacon 
which my friend’s Servants give him 
now and again for Charity’s sake, he 
would have nothing better to eat from 
Week’s End to Week’s End than the 
hunch of Bread and the morsel of 
Cheese that are doled forth to him 
every morning when he goes to his 
labor. Only the other day, his sixth 
daughter, a comely Piece enough, was 
Married. The poor old Shepherd begs 
a Holiday, granted to him easily 
enough, and goes home at Midday in- 
stead of Even, thinking to have some 
part in the Wedding Rejoicings, the 
which his last week’s wages have gone 
some way to furnish forth. I promise 
you that ’tis a fine Family Feast that 
he comes across. What but ribs of 
Beef and Strong Ale — none of your 
Harvest Clink — and old Cyder and 
Plumb-pudding galore ! But his Fam- 
ily will have none of his compauy, 
and set the poor old Shepherd apart, 
giving him but an extra lump of Bread 
and Cheese to regale himself withal. 
’Twas he who told the Story to my 
Friend, from whom I heard it. What, 
think you, was his simple complaint, 


his sole Protest against so milch Cru- 
elty and Injustice ? He did not rush 
into the Feasting Room and curse 
these Ingrates ; he did not trample on 
this Brood that he had nurtured, and 
that had turned out worse in their 
Unthankfulness than Vipers ; no, he 
just sat apart, wringing of his Hands, 
and meekly wailing, “ What a weddin’, 
and narrer a bit o’ puddin’ — narrer a 
bit, a bit o’ puddin’ ! ” The poor soul 
had set his head on a slice of dough 
with raisins in it, and even this crumb 
from their Table was denied him by 
his Cubs. ’Tis a brave thing, is it 
not, Neighbor, to be come to Three- 
score Years, and to have had Fruitful 
Loins, and to be Mocked and Misused 
by those thou hast begotten ? How 
infinitely better do we deem ourselves 
than the Cat and Dog, and yet how 
often do we imitate those Dumb Beasts 
in our own degree ! fondling them 
indeed when they are Kittens and 
Puppies, but fighting Tooth and Nail 
with them when they be full grown. 
But there is as much to be said on the 
one side as on the other ; and for 
every poor old Lear wandering up and 
down, pursued by the spite of Goneril 
and Regan, shall you find a Cordelia 
whose heart is broken by her Sire’s 
Cruelty. 

We did not long abide in Ostend. 
Presently my master grew tired of the 
Town, as he did of most Things, and 
longed for change. He had no better 
words for the Inukeepers, Merchants, 
and others who attended him than to 
call them a parcel of Extortionate 
Thieves, and to vow that they were 
all in a conspiracy for robbing and 
bringing him to the Poor House. lie 
often did us the honor to accuse us of 
being in the Plot ; and many a time 
I felt inclined to resent his Imperti- 
nence and to cudgel the abusive little 
man soundly ; but I was wise, and 
held my Tongue and my Hand as 
well. Following the Chaplain’s, ad- 
vice, and humoring this little Man- 
monkey in all his caprices, I found 


that he was not so bad a master after 
all, and that when he was Drunk, 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


which was almost always, he could 
be generous enough. When he was 
sober and bewailed his excessive Ex- 
penditure, our policy was to be Mum, 
or else to Flatter him ; and so no bones 
were broken, and I was well clad and 
fed, and always had a piece of gold in 
my pouch, and so began to Feel my Feet. 

We visited most of the towns in the 
Low Countries, then under the Aus- 
trian rule, enjoying ourselves with but 
little occasion for repining. Now our 
travelling was done on Horseback, 
and now, when there was a Canal 
Route, by one of those heavy, lumber- 
ing, jovial old boats called Treyck- 
shuyts. I know not whether I spell the 
word correctly, for in the Languages, 
albeit fluent enough, I could never be 
accurate ; but of the pleasant old ves- 
sels themselves I shall ever preserve 
a lively recollection. You made a 
bargain with the Master before starting, 
giving him so many guilders for a 
journey, say between Ghent and Bru- 
ges, the charge amounting generally 
to about a Guinea a day for each 
Gentleman passenger, and half the 
sum for a servant. And the Domes- 
tic’s place on the fore-deck and in the 
fore-cabin was by no means an un- 
pleasant one ; for there he was sure 
to meet good store of comely Fraws, 
and Jungfraws comelier still, with 
their clean white caps, Linsey-woolsey 
petticoats, wooden shoes, and little 
gold crosses about their necks. Farm- 
ers and laboring men and pedlars, 
with now and then a fat, smirking 
Priest or two, who tried Hard to Con- 
vert you, if by any means he discov- 
ered you to be a Heretic, made up the 
complement of passengers forward ; 
but I, as a servant, was often called 
aft, and had the pick of both compa- 
nies, with but light duties, and faring 
always like a Fighting Cock. For no 
sooner was our Passage-Money paid 
than it became my Duty to lay in a 
Great Stock of Provisions for the 
voyage, my master disdaining to put 
up with the ordinary country Fare of 
dried fish, salted beef, pickled cabbage, 
hard-boiled eggs, faro-Beer, Schiedam, 
8 


and so forth, and instructing me, 
under Mr. Hodge’s direction, to pur- 
chase Game, Venison, Fruit, Vegeta- 
bles, Preserves, Cheeses, and other 
condiments, with a sufficient number 
of flasks of choice wine, and a little 
keg of strong cordial, for fear of Ac- 
cidents. And aboard the Treyckshuyt 
it was all Singing and Dancing and 
Carding and drinking of Toasts. The 
quantity of Tobacco that the country 
people took was alarming, and the 
fumes thereof at first highly displeasing 
to Mr. Pinchin ; but I, from my sea 
education, and the Time I had passed 
in the Western Indies, was a seasoned 
vessel as to tobacco ; and often when 
my Master had gone to his cabin for 
the night was permitted to partake of 
a Puff on deck with the Reverend Mr. 
Hodge, who dearly loved his Pipe of 
Virginia. The Chaplain always called 
me John D. ; and indeed by this time 
I seemed to be fast losing the charac- 
ter as well as the name of Dangerous. 
My life was passed in the Plenitude 
of Fatness ; and I may say almost 
that I was at Grass with Nebuchad- 
nezzar, and had one Life with the 
beasts of the field ; for my days were 
given up to earthly indulgences, and I 
was no better than a stalled ox. But 
the old perils and troubles of my ca- 
reer were only Dormant, and ere long I 
was to become Jack Dangerous again. 

A year passed away in this eating 
and drinking, dozy, lazy kind of life. 
I was seventeen years of age, and it 
was the autumn of the year ’29. We 
were resting for a time — not that 
Master, Chaplain, or Man ever did 
much to entitle them to repose — at the 
famous watering-place of Spa, close 
to the German Frontier. We put up 
at the Silver Stag, where we were en- 
tained in very Handsome Style. Spa, 
or the Spaw, as it was sometimes 
called, was then one of the most Re- 
nowned Baths in Europe, and was 
attended by the very Grandest com- 
pany. Here, when we arrived, was 
my Lord Duke of Tantivy, an English 
nobleman of the very Highest Figure, 
accompanied by my Lady Duchess, 


113 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


the Lord Marquis of Newmarket, his 
Grace’s Son and Heir, who made 
Rare AVork at the gaming tables, with 
which the place abounded ; the Ladies 
Kitty and Bell Jockey more, his 
daughters ; and attended by a Numer- 
ous and sumptuous suite. Here also 
did I see the famous French Prince 
de Noisy-Gevres, then somewhat out 
of favor at the French Court, for 
writing of a Lampoon on one of his 
Eminence the Cardinal Minister’s 
Lady Favorites ; the Great Muscovite 
Boyard Stchigakoff, who had been 
here ever since the Czar Peter his 
master had honored the Spaw with his 
presence ; and any number of Foreign 
Notabilities, of the most Illustrious 
Rank, and of either sex. Money was 
the great Master of the Ceremonies, 
however, and he who had the Longest 
Purse was bidden to the Bravest En- 
tertainments. The English of Quality, 
indeed (as is their custom, which 
makes ’em so Hated by Foreigners), 
kept themselves very much to them- 
selves, and my Lord Duke of Tantivy’s 
party, with the exception of the Mar- 
quis of Newmarket, who was good 
enough to Borrow a score of gold 
pieces from us, and to Rook us at 
cards now and then, took not the 
slightest notice of my poor little Mas- 
ter, who was dying to be introduced 
into Polite Society, and spread abroad 
those fictions of his cousinage to Lady 
Betty Heeltap and my Lord Poddle 
everywhere he went ; but the French 
and German Magnificoes were less 
Haughty, and were glad to receive an 
English Traveller w T ho, when his 
Vanity was concerned, would spend 
his cash without stint. AVe drank a 
great deal of the AVater of the Spaw, 
and uncommonly nasty it was, making 
it a Thing of vital necessity to take 
the Taste of it out of our Mouths as 
soon as might be with AVine and 
Strong AVaters. 

From the Spaw we went by easy 
Stages to Cologne, a dirty, foul-smelling 
place, but very Handsome in Buildings, 
and saw all that was to be seen, that is 
to say, the churches, which Abound 


Greatly. The Jesuit’s Church is the 
neatest, and this was shown us in a 
very complaisant manner, although 
’tis not the custom to allow Protestants 
to enter it. Our Cicerone was a bounc- 
ing young Jesuit, with a Face as Rosy 
as the sunny side of a Katherine Pear ; 
but it shocked me to hear how he in- 
dulged in Drolleries and Railleries in 
the very edifice itself. He quizzed 
both the Magnificence and Tawdriness 
of the Altars, the Images of the Saints, 
the Rich Framing of the Relics, and 
all he came across, seeming no more 
impressed by their solemnity than the 
Verger Fellow in AVestminster Abbey 
when he shows the AVaxwork to a 
knot of Yokels at sixpence a head. 
“ Surely,” I thought, u there must be 
something wrong in a Faith whose 
Professors make so light of its cere- 
monies, and turn Buffoons in the very 
Temples ; ” nor could I help mumuring 
inwardly at that profusion of Pearls, 
Diamonds, and Rubies bestowed on 
the adornment of a parcel of old Bones, 
decayed Teeth, and dirty Rags. A 
Fine English Lady, all paint and Fur- 
belows, who was in the church with 
us, honestly owned that she coveted 
St. Ursula’s great Pearl Necklace, 
and, says she, “ ’Tis no sin, and not 
coveting one’s neighbor’s goods, for 
neither St. Ursula nor the Jesuits are 
any Neighbors of mine ; ” and as for 
my Master, he stared at a Great St. 
Christopher, mighty fine in Silver, and 
said that it would have looked very 
well as an Ornament for a Cistern ia 
his garden at Hampstead. 

From Cologne to Nuremberg was 
five days, travelling post from Frank- 
fort ; and here we observed the differ- 
ence between the Free Towns of Ger- 
many and those under the government 
of petty Absolute Princes. The streets 
of Nuremberg are well built, and full 
of People ; the shops are loaded with 
Merchandize, and commonly Clean 
and Cheerful. In Cologne and AV urts- 
burg there was but a sort of shabby 
finery : a number of dirty People of 
Quality sauntered out ; narrow, nasty 
streets out of repair ; and above half 


114 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


of the common Sort asking Alms. 
Mr. Hodge, who would have his jest, 
compared a Free Town to a handsome, 
clean Dutch Burgher’s wife, and a 
Petty Prince’s capital to a poor Town 
Lady of Pleasure, painted and rib- 
boned out in her Head-dress, with 
tarnished Silver-lace Shoes, and a 
ragged Under Petticoat — a miserable 
mixture of Vice and Poverty. 

Here at Nuremburg they had Sump- 
tuary Laws, each man and woman 
being compelled to dress according to 
his Degree, and the Better sort only 
being licensed to wear Rich suits of 
clothes. And, to my thinking (though 
the Putting it in Practice might prove 
somewhat inconvenient), we should be 
much better off in England if some 
such laws were made for the modera- 
tion and restraining of Excess and 
Extravagance in Apparel. As folks 
dress now-a-days, it is impossible to 
tell Base Raff from the Highest Qual- 
ity. What with the cheapness of 
Manufactured goods, and the perni- 
cious introduction of imitation Gold 
and Silver-lace, you shall find Drapers* 
apprentices, Tavern drawers, and Cook 
wenches, making as Brave a Figure 
on Sundays as their masters and mis- 
tresses ; and many a young Spark has 
been brought to the Gallows, and 
many a poor Lass to Bridewell or the 
'Spital, through an over Fondness for 
cheap Finery, and a crazy conceit for 
dressing like their betters. 

Nuremburg hath its store of Churches 
and Relics, and the like ; and even 
the Lutherans, who are usually thought 
to be so strict and severe in the adorn- 
ment of their Temples, have in one 
of ’em a large Cross fairly set with 
jewels. But this is nothing to the 
Popish High Church, where they have 
at least a score of Saints, all dressed 
out in laced clothes, and fair Full-bot- 
tomed Wigs, plentifully powdered. 
Here did we come across a Prince 
Bishop of one of the Electoral Ger- 
man Towns, travelling with a Mighty 
Retinue of Canons and Priests, and 
Assessors and Secretaries, and a long 
train of Mules most richly caparisoned, 


with a guard of a hundred Musketeers, 
with violet liveries and Mitres broid- 
ered on their cartouch-boxes, to keep 
the Prince Bishop from coming to 
harm. My Master dined with this 
Reverend Personage, although Mr. 
Hodge, to maintain the purity of his 
cloth, kept aloof from any such Papis- 
tical entertainment ; but I was of the 
party, it being my duty to wait behind 
the Squire’s chair. W e dined at two 
of the clock on’ very rich meats, high 
spiced, as I have usually found Princes 
and Bishops to like their victuals (for 
the Plainer sort soon Pall on their 
Palates), and after dinner there was a 
Carousal, which lasted well nigh till 
bed-time. His Episcopal Highness’s 
Master of the Horse (though the title 
of Master of the Mules, on which 
beasts the company mostly rode, would 
have better served him) got somewhat 
too Merry on Rhenish about Dusk, 
and was carried out to the stable, 
where the Palefreneers littered him 
down with straw, as though he had 
been a Horse or a Mule himself ; and 
then a little fat Canon, who was the 
Buffoon or Jack Pudding of the party, 
sang songs over his drink which were 
not in the least like unto Hymns or 
Canticles, but rather of a most Mun- 
dane, not to say Loose, order of Chant. 
His Highness (who wore the Biggest 
Emerald ring on his right Forefinger, 
over his glove, that ever I saw) took 
a great fancy to my Master, and at 
Parting pledged him in choice Rhenish 
in the handsomest fashion, using for 
that purpose a Silver Bell holding at 
least a Pint and a half English. Out 
of this Bell he takes the clapper, and 
holding it mouth upwards, drains it to 
the health of my Master, then fixes 
the clapper in again, Topsy-turvies his 
goblet, and rings a peal on the bell to 
show that he is a right Skinker. My 
Master does the same, as in Duty 
Bound, and mighty Flustered he got 
before the Ringing-time came ; and 
then the little Fat Canon that sang the 
songs essayed to do the same, but 
was in such a Quandary of Liquor, 
that he spills a pint over Mr. Secre- 


115 


The Strange Adtentures of Captain Dangerous . 


tary’s lace bands, and the two would 
have fallen to Fisticuffs but for his 
Episcopal Highness (who laughed till 
his Sides Shook again) commanding 
that they should be separated by the 
Lacqueys. This was the most jovial 
Bishop that I did meet with ; and I 
have heard that he was a good kind of 
man enough to the Poor, and not a harsh 
Sovereign to his subjects, especially to 
the Female Part who were fortunate 
enough to be pretty ; but young as I was, 
and given to Pleasures, I could not help 
lifting up my Hands in shocked Amaze- 
ment to see this Roystering kind of life 
held by a Christian Prelate. And it 
is certain that many of the High 
Dutch Church Dignitaries were at this 
time addicted to a most riotous mode 
of living. ’Twas thought no scandal 
in a Bishop to Drink, or to Dice, or 
to gallivant after Damosels ; but woe 
be to him if he Dared to Dance, for 
the Shaking of a Leg (that had a cas- 
sock over it) was held to be a most 
Heinous and Unpardonable Sin. 

Next to Ratisbon, where Mr. Pinchin 
was Laid up with a Fever brought on 
by High Living, and for more than 
Five Weeks remained between Life 
and Death, causing both to Mr. Hodge 
and myself the Greatest Anxiety ; for, 
with all his Faults and absurd Humors, 
there was something about the Little 
Man that made us Bear with him. 
And to be in his Service, for all his cap- 
ricious and passing Meannesses, was 
to be in very Good Quarters indeed. 
He was dreadfully frightened at the 
prospect of Slipping his Cable in a 
Foreign Land, and was accustomed, 
during the Delirium that accompanied 
the Fever, to call most piteously on 
his Mamma, sometimes fancying him- 
self at Hampstead, and sometimes 
battling with the W aves in the Agonies 
<of the cramp, as I first came across 
him at Ostend. When he grew better, 
to our Infinite Relief, the old fit of 
Economy came upon him, and he must 
needs make up his mind to Diet him- 
self upon Panada and Mint Tea, 
taking no other nourishment until his 
Doctor tells him that if he did not fall 


to with a Boast chicken and a flask of 
White Wine, he would sink and Die 
from pure Exhaustion. After this he 
began to pick up a bit, and to Relish 
his Victuals ; but it was woful to see 
the countenance he pulled when the 
Doctor’s Bill was brought him, and he 
found that he had something like 
Eighty Pounds sterling to pay for a 
Sickness of Forty Days. Of course 
he swore that he had not had a tithe 
of the Draughts and Mixtures that 
were set down to him, — and he had 
not indeed cousumed them bodily, for 
the poor little Wretch would have 
assuredly Died had he swallowed a 
Twentieth Part of the Vile Messes 
that the Pill-blistering Gentleman sent 
in ; but Draughts and Mixtures had 
all duly arrived, and we in our Discre- 
tion had uncorked them, and thrown 
the major part of their contents out of 
window. We were in league forsooth 
(so he said) with the Doctor to Eat 
and Ruin him, and ’twas not till the 
latter had threatened to appeal to the 
Burgomaster, and to have us all clapped 
lip in the Town Gao^for roving adven- 
turers (for they manage things with a 
High Hand at Ratisbon) that the con- 
valescent would consent to Discharge 
the Pill-blisterer’s demands ; and, 
granting even that all this Muckwash 
had been supplied, the Doctor must 
have been after all an Extortioner, 
and have made a Smart Profit out of 
that said Fever ; for he presses a com- 
pliment of a silver snuff-box on the 
Chaplain, giving me also privately a 
couple of Golden Ducats ; nor have I 
any doubt that the Innkeeper had also 
his commission to receive for recom- 
mending a Doctor to the sick English- 
man, and was duly satisfied by Mein- 
heer Bolus. 

There was the Innkeeper’s bill itself 
to be unpouched, and a mighty Pother 
there was over each item, Mr. Pinchin 
seeming to think that because he had 
been sick it was our Duty to have 
laid abed too, swallowing naught but 
Draughts and Slops. Truth was, that 
we should not have been Equal to the 
task of Nursing and Tending so difficult 


116 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


a Patient had we not taken Fortifying 
and Substantial Nourishment and a 
sufficiency of Wholesome Liquor ; not 
making merry it is true, with indecent 
revelry, but Bearing up with a Grave 
and Reverent countenance, and taking 
our Four Meals a day, with Refreshing 
Sups between whiles. And I have 
always found that the vicinage of a 
Sick Room is apt to make one exceed- 
ing Hungry and Thirsty, and that a 
Moribund, albeit he can take neither 
Bite nor Sup himself, is, in his sur- 
roundings, the cook’s best Friend, and 
the Vintner’s most bountiful Patron. 

Coming to his health again, Mr. 
Pinchin falls nevertheless into a state 
of Dark Melancholy and Despondency, 
talking now of returning to England, 
and ending his days there, and now 
entertaining an even Stranger Fancy 
that had come over his capricious 
mind. We had nursed him during his 
sickness according to the best of our 
Capacity, but felt nevertheless the 
want of some Woman’s hand to help 
us. Now all the Maids in the House 
were mortally afraid of the Fever, and 
would not so much as enter the Sick 
Man’s apartment, much less make his 
bed ; while, if we had not taken it at 
our own Risk to promise the Innkeeper 
Double Fees for lodging, the cowardly 
knave would have turned us out, Neck 
and Crop, and we should have been 
forced to convey our poor Sufferer to a 
common Hospital. But there was in 
this City of Ratisbon a convent of 
Pious Ladies who devoted themselves 
wholly (and without Fee or Reward 
for the most part) to works of Mercy 
and Charity ; and Mr. Hodge happen- 
ing to mention my Master’s State to 
the English Banker — one Mr. Sturt, 
who was a Romanist, but a very civil 
kind of man — he sends to the convent, 
and there comes down forthwith to 
our Inn a dear Good Nun that turned 
out to be the most zealous and patient 
Nurse that I have ever met with in 
my Travels. She sat up night and 
day with the Patient, and could scarcely 
be persuaded to take ever so little need- 
ful Rest and Refreshment. When she 


was not ministering to the sufferer’s 
wants she was Praying, although it did 
scandalize Mr. Hodge a little to see 
her tell her Beads ; and when Mr. 
Pinchin was well enough to eat his 
first slice of chicken, and sip his first 
beaker of white wine, she Clapped her 
Hands for joy, and sang a little Latin 
Hymn. When it came to her dismissal, 
this Excellent Nun (the whole of whoso 
Behaviour was most touchingly Edi- 
fying) at first stoutly refused to accept 
of any Recompense for her services 
(which, truly, no Gold, Silver, or Jew- 
els could have fitly rewarded) ; and I 
am ashamed to say that my Master, 
who had then his Parsimonious Night- 
cap on, was at first inclined to take 
the Good Sister at her Word. Mr. 
Hodge, however, showed him the Gross 
Ingratitude and Indecorum of such a 
proceeding, and, as was usual with 
him, he gave way, bellowing, how- 
ever, like a Calf when the Chaplain 
told him that he could not in Decency 
do less than present a sum of Fifty 
Ducats (making about Forty Pounds 
of our Money) to the convent ; for 
personal or private Guerdon the Nun 
positively refused to take. So the 
Money was given, to the great delec- 
tation of the Sisterhood, who, I believe, 
made up their minds to Sing Masses 
for the bountiful English Lord as they 
called him, whether he desired it or not. 

Sorry am I to have to relate that so 
Pleasant and Moving an Incident 
should have had anything like a Dark 
side. But ’tis always thus in the 
World, and there is no Rose without 
a Thorn. My master, thanks to his 
Chaplain, and, it may be, likewise to 
my own Humble and Respectful Rep- 
resentations while I was a-dressing of 
him in the Morning, had come out of 
this convent and sick-nurse affair with 
Infinite credit to himself and to the 
English nation in general. Every- 
where in Ratisbon was his Liberality 
applauded ; but, alas, the publicity 
that was given to his Donation speedily 
brought upon us a Plague and Swarm 
of Ravenous Locusts and Blood-suck- 
ers. There were as many convents 


117 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


in Ratisbon as plums in a Christmas 
porridge ; there were Nuns of all kinds 
of orders, many of whom I am afraid, 
no better than they should be ; there 
were Black Monks and Gray Monks 
and Brown Monks and White Monks, 
Monks of all the colors of the Rainbow, 
for aught I can tell. There were 
Canons and Chapters and Priories and 
Brotherhoods and Sisterhoods and Ec- 
clesiastical Hospitals and Priors’ Al- 
monries and Saints’ Guilds without 
end. Never did I see a larger fry of 
holy men and women, professing to 
live only for the next world, but mak- 
ing the very best of this one while 
they were in it. A greasy, lazy, 
worthless Rabble-Rout they were, 
making their Religion a mere Pretext 
for Mendicancy and the worst of 
crimes. For the most part they were 
as Ignorant as Irish Hedge School- 
masters ; but there were those among 
them of the Jesuit, Capuchin, and 
Benedictine orders ; men very subtle 
and dangerous, well acquainted with 
the Languages, and able to twist you 
round their Little Fingers with False 
Rhetoric and Lying Persuasions. 
These Snakes in the grass got about 
my poor weak-minded Master, al- 
though we, as True Protestants and 
Faithful Servants, did our utmost to 
keep them out ; but if you closed the 
Door against ’em, they would come in 
at the Keyhole, and if you made the 
Window fast, they would slip down 
the Chimney ; and, with their Perni- 
cious Doctrines, Begging Petitions, 
and Fraudulent Representations, did 
so Badger, Bait, Beleaguer, and Bully 
him, that the poor Man knew not 
which Way to Turn. They too did 
much differ in their Theology, and 
each order of Friars seemed to hold 
the strong opinion that all who wore 
cowls cut in another shape than theirs, 
or shaved their pates differently, must 
Infallibly Burn ; but they were of one 
Mind in tugging at Mr. Pinchin’s 
Purse-strings, and their cry was ever 
that of the Horse-Leech’s Three 
Daughters — “ Give, give ! ” 

Thus they did extract from him 


Forty Crowns in gold for Redeeming 
out of Slavery among the Sallee Rovers 
ten Citizens of Ratisbon fallen into 
that doleful captivity; although I do 
on my conscience believe that there 
were not five native-born men in the 
whole city who had ever seen the Salt 
Sea, much less a Sallee Rover. Next 
was a donation for a petticoat for this 
Saint, and a wig for that one ; a score 
of Ducats for a School, another for an 
Hospital for Lepers ; until it was 
Ducats here and Ducats there all day 
long. Nor was this the worst ; for 
my Master began to be Troubled in 
the Spirit, and to cry out against the 
Vanities of the World, and to sigh 
after the Blessedness of* a Life passed 
in Seclusion and Contemplation. 

“ I’ll turn Monk, I will,” he cried 
out one day ; “ my Lord Duke of 
Wharton did it, and why should not I ? ” 

“ Monk, and a Murrain to them 
and Mercy to us all ! ” says Mr. Hodge, 
quite aghast. “ What new Bee will 
you put under your Bonnet next, sir ? ” 

“ You’re a Heretic,” answers Mr. 
Pinchin. “ An Anglican Heretic, and 
so is my knave John here. There’s 
nothing like the old Faith. There’s 
nothing like Relics. Didn’t I see a 
prodigious claw set in gold only yes- 
terday in the Barnabite Church, and 
wasn’t that the true and undoubted 
relic of a Griffin ? ” 

“Was the Griffin a Saint?” asks 
the Chaplain humbly. 

“ What’s that to you ? ” retorts my 
Master. “You’re a Heretic, you’re 
a Scoffer, an Infidel ! I tell you that 
I mean to become a Monk.” 

“ What, and wear peas in your 
shoes ! nay, go without shoes at all, 
and leave off cutting your toe-nails ? ” 
quoth the Chaplain, much irate. 
“ Forsake washing and the Thirty-nine 
Articles ! Shave your head and for- 
swear the Act of Settlement ! Wear 
a rope girdle and a rosary instead of 
a handsome sword with a silver hilt 
at your side ! Go about begging and 
bawling of paternosters ! Was it for 
this that I, a Clergyman of the Church 
of England, came abroad with you to 


118 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


keep you in the True Faith and a 
Proper respect for the Protestant Suc- 
cession ? ” Mr. Hodge had quite 
forgotten the value of his Patron’s fa- 
vor, and was growing really angry. 
In those days men would really make 
sacrifices for conscience’ sake. 

“ Hang the Protestant Succession, 
and you too ! ” screams Mr. Pinchin. 

“ Jacobite, Papist, Warming Pan ! ” 
roars the Chaplain, “ I will dilate you 
to the English Envoy here, and you 
shall be laid by the heels as soon as 
ever you set foot in England. You 
shall swing for this, sir 3 ” 

“ Leave the Room ! ” yells Mr. 
Pinchin, starting up, but trembling in 
every limb, for he was hardly yet con- 
valescent of his Fever. 

“ I won’t,” answers the sturdy Chap- 
lain. “ You wretched rebellious little 
Ape, I arrest you in the King’s name 
and Convocation’s. I’ll teach you to 
malign the Act of Settlement, I will ! ” 

Whenever Mr. Hodge assumed a 
certain threatening tone, and began to 
pluck at his cassock in a certain man- 
ner, Mr. Pinchin was sure to grow 
frightened. He was beginning to look 
scared, when I, who remembering my 
place as a servant had hitherto said 
nothing, ventured to interpose. 

“ Oh, Mr. Pinchin ! ” I pleaded, 
“ think of your Mamma in England. 
Why, it will break the good lady’s 
heart if you go Romewards, Sir. 
Think of your estate. Think of your 
tenants and the Commission of the 
Peace, and the duties of a Liveryman 
of the City of London.” 

I knew that I had touched my Mas- 
ter in a tender part, and anon he began 
to whimper, and cry about his Mamma, 
who, he shrewdly enough remarked, 
might cause his Estate to be seques- 
trated under the Act against Aliena- 
tion of Lands by Popish Recusants, 
and so rob the Monks of their prey. 
And then, being soothingly addressed 
by Mr. Hodge, he admitted that the 
Friars were for the most part Beggars 
and Thieves ; and before supper-time 
we obtained an easy permission from 
him to drive those Pestilent Gentry 


from the doors, and deny him on every 
occasion when they should be impudent 
enough to seek admission to his pres- 
ence. 

We were no such high Favorites in 
Ratisbon after this ; and I believe that 
the Jesuits denounced us to the In- 
quisition at Rome, — in case we should 
ever go that way, — that the Capuchins 
cursed us, and the Benedictines preach- 
ed against us. The Town Authorities 
began also to look upon us with a cold 
eye of suspicion ; and but for the 
sojourn of an English Envoy in Ratis- 
bou (we had diplomatic agents then 
all over the Continent, and very little 
they did for their Money save Dance 
and Intrigue) the Burgomaster and 
his Councillors might have gotten up 
against us what the French do call 
une querelle d y Allemand, which may be 
a Quarrel about Anything, and is a 
Fashion of Disagreeing peculiar to 
the Germans, who may take offence at 
the cock of your Hat or the cut of 
your Coat, and make either of them a 
State affair. Indeed, I believe that 
some Imprudent Expressions, made 
use of by my Master on seeing the 
Horrible Engines of Torture shown to 
the curious in the vaults of the castle, 
were very nearly being construed into 
High Treason by the unfriendly cler- 
ical party, and that an Information by 
the Stadt- Assessor was being actually 
drawn up against him, when, by much 
Persuasion coupled with some degree 
of gentle Violence, we got him away 
from Ratisbon altogether. 

Chapter the Fourteenth. 

OF THE MANNER IN WHICH I CAME TO 

THE FAMOUS CITY OF PARIS. 

From Ratisbon we travelled down 
the River Danube, in a very pleasant 
and agreeable manner, in a kind of 
Wooden House mounted on a flat- 
bottomed Barge, and not unlike a 
Noah’s Ark. ’Twas most convenient, 
and even handsomely laid out, with 
Parlors, and with Drawing-Rooms, 
and Kitchens and Stoves, and a broad 
planked Promenade over all railed in, 


119 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


and with Flowering Plants in pots by 
the sides, quite like a garden. They 
are rowed by twelve men each, and 
move with an almost Incredible Celer- 
ity, so that in the same day one can 
Delight one’s Eye with a vast Variety 
of Prospects ; and within a short space 
of time the Traveller has the diversion 
of seeing a populous City adorned 
with magnificent Palaces, and the 
most Romantic Solitudes, which ap- 
pear quite Apart from the commerce 
of Mankind, the banks of the Danube 
being exquisitely disposed into Forests, 
Mountains, Vineyards rising in Ter- 
races one above the other, Fields of 
Corn and Rye, great Towns, and Ruins 
of Ancient Castles. Now for the first 
time did I see the Cities of Passau 
and of Lintz, famous for the retreat 
of the Imperial Court when Vienna 
was besieged by the Great Turk, the 
same that John Sobieski, King of 
Poland, timeously Defeated and put to 
Rout, to the great shame of the Osman- 
lis, and the Everlasting Glory of the 
Christian arms. 

And now for Vienna. This is the 
capital of the German Emperor Kai- 
ser, or Caesar as he calls himself, and 
a mighty mob of under-Caesars or 
Archdukes he has about him. In my 
young days the Holy Roman Empire 
was a Flourishing concern, and made 
a great noise in the world ; but now 
people do begin to speak somewhat 
scornfully of it, and to hold it in no 
very great Account, principally, I am 
told, owing to the levelling Principles 
of the Emperor Joseph the Second, 
who, instead of keeping up the proper 
State of Despotic Rule, and filling his 
Subjects’ minds with a due impression 
of the Dreadful Awe of Imperial 
Majesty, has taken to occupying him- 
self with the affairs of Mean and 
common persons, — such as Paupers, 
Debtors, Criminals, Orphans, Mechan- 
ics, and the like, — quite turning his 
back on the Exalted Tradition of un- 
disputed power, and saying sneeringly, 
that he only bore Crown and Sceptre 
because Royalty was his Trade. This 
they call a Reforming Sovereign ; but 


I cannot see what good comes out of 
such wild Humors and Fancies. It is 
as though my Lord Duke were to ask 
his Running Footmen to sit down at 
table with him ; beg the Coachman 
riot to trouble himself about stable- 
work, but go wash the carriage-wheels 
and currycomb the Horses himself; 
bid my Lady Duchess and his Daugh- 
ters dress themselves in Dimity Gowns 
and Mob caps, while Sukey Mops and 
Dorothy Draggletail went off to the 
drawing-room in Satin sacks and 
High-heeled shoes ; and, to cap his 
Absurdities, called up all his Tenants 
to tell them that henceforth they were 
to pay no Rent or Manor Dues at the 
Court Leet, but to have their Farms 
in freehold forever. No ; it is cer- 
tain the World cannot go on without 
Authority, and that, too, of the' Smart- 
est. What would you think of a ship 
where the Master Mariner had no 
power over his crew, and no license 
to put ’em in the Bilboes, or have ’em 
up at the gangway to be Drubbed 
soundly when they deserved it ? And 
these Reforming Sovereigns, as they 
call ’em, are only making, to my mind, 
Rods for their own Backs, and Halters 
for their own Necks. Where would 
the Crown and Majesty be now, I 
wonder, if His Blessed Majesty had 
given way to the Impudent Demands 
of Mr. Washington and the American 
Rebels ? 

The Streets of Vienna, when I first 
visited that capital, were very close 
and narrow— so narrow, indeed, that 
the fine fronts of the Palaces (which 
are very Grand) can scarcely be seen. 
Many of ’em deserve close observation, 
being truly Superb, all built of Fine 
White Stone, and excessive high, the 
town being much too little for the 
number of its inhabitants. But the 
Builders seem to have repaired that 
Misfortune by clapping one town on 
the top of another, most of the Houses 
being of Five and some of Six Stories. 
The Streets being so narrow, the 
rooms are all exceeding Dark, and 
never so humble a mansion but has 
half a dozen families living in it. In 


120 


The Strange Adventures 

the Handsomest even all Ranks and 
Conditions are Mingled together pell- 
mell. You shall find Field-Marshals, 
Lieutenants, Aulic Councillors, and 
Great Court Ladies divided but by a 
thin partition from the cabins of Tailors 
and Shoemakers; and few even of 
the Quality could afford a House to 
themselves, or had more than Two 
Floors in a House — one for their own 
use, and another for their Domestics. 
It was the Dead Season of the year 
when we came to this City, and so, 
at not so very enormous a rate, we 
got a suite of six or eight large rooms 
all inlaid, the Doors and Windows 
richly carved and gilt, and the Furni- 
ture such as is rarely seen but in the 
Palaces of Sovereign Princes in other 
countries ; the Hangings in finest tap- 
estry in Brussels, prodigious large 
looking-glasses in silver frames (in 
making which they are exceeding Ex- 
pert) ; fine Japan Tables, Beds, Chairs, 
Canopies, and Curtains of the richest 
Genoa Damask or Velvet, almost cov- 
ered with gold lace or embroidery. 
The whole made Gay by Pictures, or 
Great Jars of Porcelain ; in almost 
every room large lustres of pure Crys- 
tal ; and everything as dirty as a 
Second-hand Clothes dealer’s booth in 
Rag Fair. 

We were not much invited out at 
Vienna, the very Highest Quality only 
being admitted to their company by 
the Austrians, who are the very 
Haughtiest and most exclusive among 
the High Dutch, and look upon a mere 
untitled Englishman as Nobody (al- 
though he may be of Ten Times better 
blood than their most noble Ragged- 
nesses). A mean sort, for all their 
finely furnished palaces, and wearing 
mighty foul Body Linen. The first 
question they ask, when they Hear 
that a Stranger desires to be Presented 
to them, is, “ Is he Born ? ” The 
query having nothing to do with the 
fact of his nativity, but meaning (so I 
have been told) , u Has he five-and- 
thirty Quarterings in his Coat-of- 
Arms ? ” And if he has but four-and- 
thirty (though some of their greatest 


of Captain Dangerous . 

nobles have not above Four or Five 
Hundred Pounds a year to live on), 
the Stranger is held to be no more 
Born than if he were an Embryo ; and 
the Quality of Vienna takes no more 
notice of him than of the Babe which 
is unborn. 

Truly, it was the Dead Season, and 
we could not have gone to many Din- 
ners and Assemblies, even if the Aris- 
tocracy had been minded to show 
hospitality towards us. There were 
Theatres and Operas, however, open, 
which much delighted my Master and 
myself (who was privileged to attend 
him), although the Reverend Mr. 
Hodge stayed away for conscience’ 
sake from such Profane amusements, 
comforting himself at home over a 
Merry Book and a Bottle of Erlauer, 
which is an Hungarian wine, very 
dark and Rough, but as strong as a 
Bullock, and an excellent stomachic. 
Nothing more magnificent than the 
Operas then performed at the Gardens 
of the Favorite, throwing the Paris 
and London houses utterly into the 
shade, and I have heard that the 
Habits, Decorations, and Scene Paint- 
ings, cost the Emperor Thirty Thou- 
sand Pound Sterling. And to think 
of the millions of poor ragged wretches 
that must have been taxed, and starved, 
and beaten, and robbed, and skinned 
alive, so to speak, before His Majesty’s 
pleasures would be paid for. The 
Stage in this Favorite Garden was 
built over a large canal, and at the 
beginning of the Second Act divided 
(as in our own Theatre hard by Sad- 
ler’s Wells) into Two Parts, discovering 
the water, on which there immediately 
came from different parts two little 
Fleets of gilded vessels, that gave the 
impression (though ludicrously incor- 
rect in their Riggings and Manoeuvres) 
of a Sea-fight. The story of the Opera 
was, if I remember right, the Enchant- 
ments of Alcina, an entertainment 
which gave opportunity for a great 
Variety of Machines and changes of 
the Scene, which were performed 
with surprising swiftness. No House 
could hold such large Decorations, 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


But the Ladies all sitting in the open 
air, exposed them to much incon- 
venience ; for there was but one Can- 
opy for the Imperial Family ; and the 
first night we were there, a shower of 
Rain coming on, the Opera was broken 
off, and the Company crowded away 
in such confusion that we were almost 
squeezed to Death. 

If their Operas were thus productive 
of such Delectable Entertainment 
(abating the Rain and crowding), I 
cannot say much for their Comedies 
and Drolls, which were highly Ridicu- 
lous. We went to the German Play- 
house, and saw the Story of Amphy- 
trion very scurvily represented. J upiter 
falls in love out of a peep-hole in the 
clouds in the beginning, and the end 
of it was the Birth of Hercules. It 
was very pitiful to see Jove, under the 
figure of Amphytrion, cheating a Tailor 
of a laced coat, and a Banker of a bag 
of Money, and a Jew of a Diamond 
Ring, with the like rascally Subter- 
fuges ; and Mercury’s usage of Sosia 
was little more dignified. And the 
play was interlarded with very gross 
expressions and unseemly gestures, 
such as in England would not be tol- 
erated by the Master of the Revels, or 
even in France by the Gentleman of 
the Chamber having charge over the 
Theatres, but at which the Viennese 
Quality, both Male and Female, did 
laugh Heartily and with much Gusto. 

Memorandum. As some of the 
Manners then existing have passed 
away (in this sad changeful age, when 
everything seems melting away like 
Cowheel Jelly at a Wedding Feast), 
I have set down for those curious in 
such matters that the Vienna Dames 
were squeezed up in my time in gowns 
and gorgets, and had built fabrics of 
gauze on their Heads about a yard 
high, consisting of Three or Four 
Stories, fortified with numberless yards 
of heavy Ribbon. The foundation of 
this alarming structure was a thing 
they called a Bourle , which was ex- 
actly of the same shape and kind — 
only four times Bigger — as those Rolls 
which our Milkmaids make use of to 


fix their Pails upon. This machine 
they covered with their own hair, with 
which they mixed a great deal of 
False ; it being a Particular and Espe- 
cial Grace with them to have their 
Heads too large to go into a moderate- 
sized Tub. Their Hair was prodigi- 
ously powdered to conceal the mixture, 
and so set out with numerous rows of 
Bodkins, sticking out three or four 
Inches on each side, made of Dia- 
monds, Pearls, Green, Red, and Yel- 
low Stones, that it certainly required 
as much Art and Experience to carry 
the load upright as to dance on May- 
day with the Garland that the Dairy 
Wenches borrow (under good security) 
from the Silversmiths in Cranbourne 
Alley. Also they had Whalebone 
Petticoats, outdoing ours by several 
yards in circumference. Vastly Ri- 
diculous were these Fashions — think 
you not so, good Sir or Madam, as 
the case may be ? and yet, may I be 
whipped, but much later in the present 
century I have seen such things as 
hoops, tours, and toupees, not one whit 
less Ridiculous. 

The Empress, a sweet pretty lady, 
was perforce obliged to wear this 
Habit ; but with the other Female 
Grandees it only served to increase 
their natural Ugliness. Memoran- 
dum : that at Court (whither we went 
not, being u unborn,” but heard a 
great deal of it from hearsay) a Game 
called Quinze was the Carding most 
In vogue. Their drawing-rooms are 
different from those in England, no 
Man Creature entering it but the old 
Grand-Master, who comes to announce 
to the Empress the arrival of His Im- 
perial Majesty the Cassar. Much 
gravity and Ceremony at these Re- 
ceptions, and all very Formal, but 
decent. The Empress sits in a great 
easy-chair ! but the Archduchesses are 
ranged on chairs with tall, straight 
Backs, but without arms ; whilst the 
other Ladies of the Court (poor things) 
may stand on one Leg, or lean against 
sideboards, to rest themselves as they 
choose ; but Sit Down they Dare not. 
This is the same Discipline, I believe, 


122 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


that still prevails, and so I speak of it 
in the present tense. The Table is 
entirely set out, and served by the 
Empress’s Maids of Honor (who put 
on the very dishes and sauces) , Twelve 
young Ladies of the First Quality, 
having no Salary, but their chamber 
at court (like our Maids at the Mont- 
pelier by Twitnam), where they live 
in a kind of Honorable Captivity, not 
being suffered to go to the Assemblies 
or Public Places in Town, except in 
compliment to the Wedding of a Sis- 
ter Maid, whom the Empress always 
presents with her picture set in Dia- 
monds. And yet, for all their Strict 
confinement, I have heard fine Ac- 
counts of the goings-on of these noble 
Ladies. The first three of them are 
called “ Ladies of the Key,” and wear 
little golden keys at their sides. The 
Dressers are not at all the figures they 
pretend to in England, being looked 
upon no otherwise than as downright 
Chamber-maids. 

So much of the State and Grandeur 
of Vienna, then the most considerable 
city in Germany, though now Berlin, 
thanks to the Genius of its Puissant 
Monarch, has Beared its head very 
high. It was, however, my cruel Fate 
to see something more of the Capital 
of the Holy Roman Empire, and that 
too in a form that was of the unpleas- 
antest. You see that my Master and 
the Chaplain and I (when we had 
been some W eeks in town, and through 
the interest of the English Bankers 
had gotten admission into some So- 
ciety not quite so exclusive as the 
People who wanted to know whether 
you were “ born ”) went one afternoon 
to an Archery Festival that was held 
in the garden of the Archchancellor’s 
Villa, Schonbrunn (now Imperial 
property). ’Twas necessary to have 
gome kind of Introduction ; but that, 
if you stood well in the Banker’s Books, 
was not very Difficult ; and, invited 
or not, you had to pay a golden Ducat 
to the Usher of Ceremonies (a prepos- 
terous creature, like the Jack of Dia- 
monds in his dress) , that brought your 
ticket to your lodgings. So away we 


went to Schonbrunn, and at a Respect- 
ful distance were privileged to behold 
two of the young Archduchesses all 
dressed, their Hair full of jewels, and 
with bows and arrows in their hands ; 
while a little way off were placed three 
oval pictures, which were the marks to 
be shot at. The first was a Cupid, 
filling a bottle of Burgundy, with the 
motto “ Cowards may he brave here” 
The second Fortune, holding a garland, 
with the motto “ Venture and Win.” 
The third a Sword with a Laurel 
Wreath at the point, and for legend, 
“ I can he vanquished without shame.” 
At t’other end was a Fine Gilded Tro- 
phy all wreathed with flowers, and 
made of little crooks, on which were 
hung rich Moorish Kerchiefs (which 
were much affected by the Viennese, 
a people very fond of gay and lively 
colors), tippets, ribbons, laces, &c. for 
the small prizes., The Empress, who 
sat under a splendid canopy fenced 
about by musketeers of the Life 
Guard, gave away the first prize with 
her own hand, which was a brave 
Ruby Ring set with Diamonds in a 
gold snuff-box. For the Second prize 
there was a little Cupid, very nicely 
done out in amethysts, and besides 
these a set of fine Porcelain, of the 
kind they call Eggshell (for its exceed- 
ing Tenderness and Brittleness), with 
some Japan trunks, feather-fans, and 
Whimwhams of that order. All the 
men of quality in Vienna were specta- 
tors ; but only the ladies had permis- 
sion to shoot. There was a good 
background of burghers and strangers, 
and in the rear of all a Mob that 
drank beer and scrambled for Kreut- 
zers, that the officers of the Guard 
who were keeping the Barriers would 
now and then throw among them for 
their Diversion’s sake. And all behind 
it was like a Fair, set out with Booths, 
where there was shooting and drinking 
and Gaming, just at one’s ease ; for I 
have ever found that in the most Des- 
potic countries the Mobile have a kind 
of Rude License accorded them ; 
whereas in States where there is Free- 
dom, Authority gives a man leave to 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


Think, but very carefully ties his 
hands and feet whenever he has a 
mind to a Frisk. My Master was iu 
very good spirits that day (having 
quite recovered his health), and for a 
time wanders about the Tents, now 
treating the common people, and now 
havi ig a bumper with Mr. Hodge. 
We had tickets for the second ring, 
but not for the Inner one, where the 
Quality were standing ; but just before 
the shooting of the great Match for the 
Empress’s ruby ring, Mr. Pinchin, 
into whose head some of the bubbles 
from the white Hungarian had begun 
to mount, begins to brag about his 
gentle extraction, and his cousinage to 
Lady Betty Heeltap and my Lord 
Poddle. He vows that he is as well 
u born ” as any of the rascaille German 
Sausage gorgers (as he calls them), 
and is as tit to stand about Royalty as 
any of them. The Chaplain, who 
was always a discreet man, tried hard 
to persuade him against thrusting him- 
self forward where his company was 
not desired ; but Mr. Pinchin was in 
that state in which arguing with a 
man makes him more obstinate. 
Away he goes, the Chaplain prudently 
withdrawing into a Booth ; but I, as 
in Duty bound, followed my Master, 
to see that he got into no mischief. 
But, alas, the Mischief that unhappy 
little Man speedily contrived to entan- 
gle himself within ! 

By dint of a Florin here and a Florin 
there, the adventurous Squire suc- 
ceeded in slipping through the row of 
Guards who separated the outer from 
the inner Ring, who, from the richness 
of his Apparel (for he was dressed in 
his very Best), may perhaps have 
mistaken him for some Court Noble- 
man who had arrived late. He had 
got within the charmed circle indeed 
(I being a few paces behind him), and 
was standing on Tip-toe to take a full 
stare at one of the young Archduch- 
esses who was bending her bow to 
shoot at Cupid, when up comes an old 
Lord with a very long white face like 
a Sheep, with a Crimson Ribbon aeross 
his breast, and a long white staff in 


his hand, atop of which was a Golden 
Key. lie first asks my Master in 
German what he wants there, at least 
so far as I could understand ; to which 
the Squire, not being versed in the 
Tongues of Almaine (and, indeed, 
High Dutch and Low Dutch are both 
very Base Parlance, and I never could 
master ’em), answers, “ Non coni- 
prenny which was his general reply 
when he was puzzled in the Foreign 
Lingos. Then the old Lord, with a 
very sharp voice and in French, tells 
him that he has no Business there, 
and bids him begone. Mr. Pinchin 
could understand French, though he 
spoke it but indifferently ; but he, being 
fairly Primed, and in one of his Obsti- 
nate Moods, musters up his best par- 
leyvoo, and tells the Ancient with the 
Golden Key (and I saw that he had 
another one hung round his neck by a 
parcel chain, and conjectured him to 
be a High Chamberlain at least) to 
go to the Devil. (I ask pardon for 
this word.) Hereupon my Lord with 
the Sheep’s countenance collars him, 
runs his white stick into his visage, so 
that the key nearly puts his eye out, 
and roars for the Guard. Then Mr. 
Pinchin, according to his custom when 
he has gotten himself into a pother, 
begins to squeal for Me, and the Chap- 
lain, and his Mamma, to help him out 
of it. My blood was up in a moment ; 
I had not had a tussle with any one 
for a long time. u Shall I who have 
brained an English Grenadier sneak 
off before a rabble-rout of Sauerkraut 
Soldiers ? ” I asked myself, remember- 
ing how much Stronger and Older I 
had grown since that night. u Here 
goes, Jack Dangerous ! ” and away [ 
went into the throng, wrenched the 
white staff from the old Lord’s hand, 
made him unhand my Master, and 
drawing his Sword for him (he being 
too terrified to draw it himself), grasp- 
ed him firmly by the arm, and was 
preparing to cut a way back for both 
of us through the crowd. But ’twas 
a mad attempt. Up came the Guard, 
every man of them Six Foot high, and 
for all they were Sauerkraut Soldiers, 


124 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


pestilent Veterans who knew what 
Fighting meant. When I saw their 
iixod Bayonets, and th%ir Mustachios 
curling with rage, I remembered a 
certain Scar I had left after a memo- 
rable night in Chari wood Chase. We 
were far from our own country, and 
there was no Domijolm of Brandy by ; 
so, though it went sorely against my 
Stomach, there was no help for it but 
to surrender ourselves at once Prison- 
ers of War. Prisoners of War, for- 
sooth ! They treated us worse than 
Galley Slaves. Our hands were bound 
behind us with cords, Halters were 
put about our necks, and, the Grena- 
diers prodding us behind with their 
Bayonets, — the Dastards, so to prick 
Unarmed Men! — we were conducted 
in ignominy through the rascal Crowd, 
which made a Grinning, Jeering, 
Hooting lane for us to pass to the 
Guardhouse at the Entrance of the 
Gardens. The Officer of the Guard 
was at first for having both of us 
strapped down to a Bench as a pre- 
liminary measure to receive two 
hundred Blows apiece with Willow 
llods in the small of our backs, which 
is their usual way of commencing Ju- 
dicial proceedings, when up comes the 
old Lord in a Monstrous Puff and 
Flurry, and says that by the Empress’s 
command no present Harm is to be 
done us ; but that we are to be re- 
moved to the Town Gaol till the 
Caesar’s pleasure respecting us shall 
be known. Her Majesty, however, 


forgot to enjoin that we were not to 
be fettered ; so the Captain of the 
Guard he claps on us the heaviest 
Irons that ever Mutineers howled in ; 
and we, being flung into a kind of 
Brewer’s Dray, and accompanied by a 
Strong Guard of Horse and Foot, 
were conveyed to Vicuna, and locked 
up in the Town Gaol. 

Luckily Mr. Hodge speedily got 
wind of our misfortune, and hied him 
to the British Ambassador, who, being 
fond of a Pleasant Story, laughed 
heartily at the recital. He promised 
to get my Master off on paymeut of 
a Fine or something of that sort ; and 
as for me, he was good enough to 
opine that I might think myself Lucky 
if I escaped with a sound dose of the 
Bastinado once a week for three 
months, and a couple of years or so in 
Irons. The Chaplain pleaded for me 
as well as for my Master as hard as 
he could ; and his Excellency frowned 
and said, that the Diversions of a 
Gentleman might run a little Wild 
sometimes and no harm done, but that 
the Insolence of Servants (which was 
a growing evil) must be restrained. 
“ At all events, I’ll see what I can 
do,” he condescended to explain. 
“ At all events, the Fellow can’t fare 
very badly for a sound Beating, and 
perhaps they will let him oft* when he 
has had cudgelling enough.” So he 
calls for his Coach, and goes off to 
Court. 


125 


1 


Chapter the Fifteenth. 

OF PARIS (by THE WAY OF THE PRISON 
AT VIENNA), AND OF MY COMING 
BACK FOR A SEASON TO MY OWN 
COUNTRY, WHERE MY MASTER, THJjJ 
CHAPLAIN, AND I PART COMPANY. 

The Fox in the Fable, so my Gran- 
num (who had a ready Memory for 
those Tales) used to tell me, when he 
first saw the Lion was half dead with 
Fright. The Second View only a lit- 
tle Dashed him with Tremor ; at the 
Third he durst salute him Boldly ; 
and at the Fourth Rencounter Mon- 
sieur Reynard steals a Shin Bone of 
Beef from under the old Roarer’s 
Nose, and laughs at his Beard. This 
Fable came back to me, as with a 
Shrug and a Grin (somewhat of the 
ruefullest) I found myself again (and 
for no Base Action I aver) in a Prison 
Hold. I remembered what a dread- 
ful Sickness and Soul-sinking I had 
felt when doors of Oak clamped with 
Iron had first clanged upon me ; when 
I first saw the Blessed Sun made into 
a Quince Tart by the cross-bars over 
his Golden face ; when I first heard 
that clashing of Gyves together which 
is the Death Rattle of a man’s Liberty. 
But now ! Gaols and I were old Ac- 
quaintances. Had I not lain long in 
the dismal Dungeon at Aylesbury? 
Had I not swelte ed in the Hold of a 
Transport Ship ? I was but a Youth ; 
but I felt myself i v this time a Parcel 
Philosopher. The first thing a man 
should do when he v ets into Gaol, is 
to ask himself whet - there is any 


chance of his being Hanged. If he 
have no Sand Blindness, or Gossamer 
dancing of Threepenny cord before his 
eyes, why then he had e’en better eat 
and drink, and Thank God, and hope 
for the Best. “ They won’t Hang 
me,” I said cheerfully enough to my- 
self, when I was well laid up in Lim- 
bo. The Empress is well known to 
be a merciful Lady, and will cast the 
ermine of Mercy over the Scarlet 
Robe of Stern Authority. Perhaps I 
shall get my Ribs basted. What of 
that ? Flesh is flesh, and will Heal. 
They cannot beat me so sorely as I 
have seen done (but never of myself 
Ordered but when I was compelled) 
to Negro Slaves. If they fine me, my 
Master must Pay. Here I am by the 
Heels, and until I get out again what 
use is there in Fretting? Lady For- 
tune has played me a scurvy trick ; 
but may she not to-morrow play as 
roguish a one to the Sheepfaced old 
Chamber Lord with the golden Key, 
or any other smart Pink-an-eye Dan- 
diprat that hangs about the Court? 
The Spoke which now is highest in 
her Wheel may, when she gives it the 
next good Twist, be undermost as 
Nock. So I took Courage, and bade 
Despair go Swing for a dried Yeoman 
Sprat as he is. 

I being a Servant, and so unjustly 
accounted of Base Degree, by these 
Sour Cabbage gorging and Sourer 
Beer swilling High Dutch Bed-Press- 
ers, was put into the Common Ward 
with the Raff ; while my Master was 
suffered, on payment of Fees, to have 


126 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


better Lodgings. Gaolers are Gaolers 
all over the world, and Golden Fetters 
are always the lightsomest. We were 
some Sixty Rascals (that is to say, 
Fifty-Nine Scoundrels, with one Hon- 
est Youth, your Humble Servant) in 
the Common Room, with but one Bed 
between us ; this being, indeed, but a 
Raised Wooden Platform, like that 
you see in a Soldiers’ Guard Room. 
They brought us some Straw every 
day, and littered us down Dog Fash- 
ion, aud that was all we had for 
Lodging Gear. It mattered little. 
There was a Roof to the Gaol that 
was weather-tight, and what more 
could a Man want ? — until things got 
better at least. 

Which they speedily did ; aud 
neither Master nor Man came to any 
very great harm. ’Twas a near touch 
though ; and the safety of Jack Dan- 
gerous’s bones hung for days, so I 
was afterwards told, by the merest 
thread. They deliberated long and 
earnestly about my case among them- 
selves. It was even, I believe, brought 
before the Aulic Council ; but, after a 
week’s confinement, and much going 
to and fro between the English Em- 
bassador and the Great ones of the 
Court, Mr. Pincliin had signified to 
him that he might procure his Enlarge- 
ment by paying a Fine of Eight Hun- 
dred Florins, which was reckoned 
remarkably cheap, considering his 
outrageous behaviour at the Shooting 
match. Some days longer they thought 
fit to detain Me ; but my Master, 
after he regained his liberty, came to 
see me once aud sometimes twice a 
day ; and, through his and Mr. Hodge’s 
kindness, I was supplied with as good 
Victuals and Drink as I had hereto- 
fore been accustomed to. Indeed, 
such abundant fare was there provided 
for me, that I had always a super- 
fluity, and I was enabled to relieve 
the necessities and fill the bellies of 
many poor Miserable Hungry creatures 
who otherwise must have starved ; for 
’twas the custom of the Crown only to 
allow their Captives a few lvreutzers, 
amounting to some twopence-farthin; 


a day English, for their subsistence. 
The Oldest Prisoner in the Ward, 
whom they called Father of the Room, 
would on this Bare Pittance take tithe 
and toll, often in a most Extortionate 
manner. Then these Gaol birds would 
fall to thieving from one another, even 
as they slept ; and if a man was weak 
of Arm and Feeble of Heart, he might 
go for a week without touching a doit 
of his allowance, and so might Die 
of Famine, unless he could manage to 
beg a little filthy Cabbage Soup, or a 
lump of Black Bread, from some one 
not wholly without Bowels of Compas- 
sion. 

But I had not been here more than 
a month when the instances of my 
master at length prevailed, and I too 
was Enlarged ; only some Fifty Florins 
being laid upon me by way of fine. 
This mulct was paid perforce by Mr. 
Pinchin ; for as ’twas through his mad 
folly, and no fault of my own, that I 
had come to Sorrow, he was in all 
Justice and Equity bound to bear me 
harmless in the Consequences. He 
was fain, however, to make some 
Demur, and to Complain, in his usual 
piteous manner, of being so amerced. 

u Suppose you had been sentenced 
to Five Hundred Blows of a Stick, 
sirrah,” — ’twas thus he put the case 
to me, logically enough, — lt would you 
have expected me to pay for thee 
in carcase, as now I am paying for 
thee in Purse ? ” 

“ Circumstances alter cases,” in- 
terposes Mr. Hodge in my behalf. 
“ Here is luckily no question of Stripes 
at all. John may bless his Stars that 
he hath gotten off without a Rib 
Roasting; and to your Worship, after 
the Tune they have made you dance 
to, and the Piper you have paid, what 
is this miserable little Fine of Fifty 
Florins ? ” So my Master paid ; and 
Leaving another Ten Florins for the 
poor Losels in the Gaol to drink his 
health in, we departed from that place 
of Durance, thinking ourselves, and 
with reason, very well out of it. 

Servants are not always so lucky 
when they too implictly obey the be- 


127 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


liests of their Masters, or, in a hot 
fever of Fidelity, stand up for them 
in Times of Danger or Desperate 
Affrays. Has there not ever been 
brought under your notice that famous 
French Law Case, of the Court Lady, 
— the Dame de Liancourt, I think she 
was called, — against whom another 
Dame had a Spite, either for her 
Beauty, or her Wit, or her Riches* 
sake ? She, riding one day in her 
Coacli-and-Six by a cross-road, comes 
upon the Dame de Liancourt, likewise 
in her Coach-and-Six, both ladies 
having the ordinary complement of 
Running Footmen. My Lady who 
had the Spite against her of Liancourt 
whispers to her Lacqueys ; and these 
poor Faithful Rogues, too eager to 
obey their Mistress’s commands, ran 
to the other coach-door, pulled out 
that unlucky Dame de Liancourt, and 
then and there inflicted on her that 
shameful chastisement which jealous 
Venus, as the Poetry books say, did, 
once upon a time, order to poor Psyche ; 
and which, even in our own times, so 
I have heard, Madame du Barry, the 
last French King’s Favorite, did cause 
Four Chambermaids to inflict on some 
Lady about Versailles with whom she 
had cause of Anger. At any rate, 
the cruel and -Disgraceful thing was 
done, the Dame sitting in her coach 
meanwhile clapping her hands. O ! 
*twas a scandalous thing. The poor 
Dame de Liancourt goes, Burning 
with Rage and Shame, to the Chief 
Town of the Province, to lodge her 
complaint. The matter is brought 
before the Parliament, and in due 
time it goes to Paris, and is heard 
and reheard, the Judges all making a 
Mighty to-do about it ; and at last, 
after some two years and a half’s 
litigation, is settled in this wise. My 
Lady pays a Fine and the Costs, and 
begs the Dame de Liancourt’s pardon. 
But what, think you, becomes of the 
two poor Lacqueys that had been rash 
enough to execute her Revengeful 
Orders ? Why, at first they are haled 
about from one gaol to another for 
Thirty Months in succession, and then 


they are subjected to the question, 
Ordinary and Extraordinary — that is 
to say, to the Torture ; and at last, 
when my Lady is paying her fine of 
10,000 livres, I think, or about Four 
Hundred Pounds of our Money, the 
Judges at Paris pronounce against 
these two poor Devils of Footmen, — 
that were as innocent of any Malice 
in the Matter as the Babe that is un- 
born, and only Did what they were 
Told, — that one is to be Hanged in 
the Place de Greve, and the other ban- 
ished to the Galleys, there to be chain- 
ed to the Oar for life. A fine En- 
couragement truly for those who think 
that, for good Victuals and a Fine 
Livery, they are bound to obey all the 
Humors and Caprices, even to the most 
Unreasonable and most Arbitrary, of 
their Masters and Mistresses. 

We were in no great Mood, after 
this affair was over, to remain in 
Vienna. Mr. Pinchin did at first 
purpose journeying through the Pro- 
vince of Styria by Gratz, to a little 
town on the sea-coast, called Trieste, 
— that has much grown in importance 
during these latter days, — and so 
crossing the Gulf to Venice ; but he 
abandoned this Scheme. His health 
was visibly breaking; his Funds, he 
said, were running low ; he was more 
anxious about his Mamma than ever; 
and ’twas easy to see that he was 
half-weary and half-afraid of the Chap- 
lain and Myself, and that he desired 
nothing Half so Much as to get Rid 
of us Both. So we packed up, and 
resumed our Wanderings, but in Re- 
treat instead of Advauce. We passed, 
coming back, through Dresden, where 
there are some fine History Pictures, 
and close to which the Saxon Elector 
had set up a great Factory for the 
making of painted Pottery Ware: not 
after the monstrous Chinese Fashion, 
but rather after the Mode practised 
with great Success at our own Chelsea. 
The manner of making this Pottery 
was, however, kept a high State Secret 
by the government of the then Saxon 


Elector ; and no strangers were, on 
any pretence, admitted to the place 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


where the Works were carried on; 
so of this we saw nothing; and not 
Sorry was I of the privation, being 
dterly Wearied and palled with much 
gadding about and Sight-seeing. So 
post to Frankfort, where there were 
a inanv Jews ; and thence to Mayence ; 
and from thence down the grand old 
River Rhine to the City of Cologne ; 
whence, by the most lagging stages I 
did ever know, to Bruxelles. But we 
stayed not here to see the sights — not 
even the droll little statue of the Man- 
nikin (at the corner of a street, in a 
most improper attitude ; and there is 
a Group quite as unseemly in one of 
the Markets, so I was told, although 
at that time we were lain to pass them 
by), which Mannikin the burgesses of 
Bruxelles regard as a kind of tutelary 
Divinity, and set much greater store 
by than do we by our London Stone, 
or little naked boy in Panyer Alley. 
But it is curious to mark what strange 
whimwhams these Foreigners run mad 
after. 

At Bruxelles my Master buys an 
old Post Carriage — cost him Two 
Hundred and Fifty Livres, which was 
not dear; and the wretched horses of 
the country being harnessed thereto, 
we made Paris in about a week after- 
wards. We alighted at a decent 
enough kind of Inn, in the Place 
named after Lewis the Great (an 
eight-sided space, and the houses hand- 
some, though not so large as Golden 
Square). There was a great sight 
the day after our coming, which we 
could not well avoid seeing. This 
was the Burial of a certain great 
nobleman, a Duke and Marshal of 
France, and Tttjhe time of his Decease 
Governor of the City of Paris. I 
have forgotten his name ; but it docs 
hot so much matter at this time of 
day, his Grace and Governorship be- 
ing as dead as Queen Anne. It began 
(the Burial), on foot, from his house, 
which was next door but one to our 
Inn, and went first to his Parish 
Church, and thence, in coaches, right 
to the other end of Paris, to a Mon- 
astery, where his Lordship’s Family 
y 1 


Vault was. There was a prodigious 
long procession of Flambeaux ; Friars, 
white, black, and gray, very trum- 
pery, and marvellous foul looking ; — 
no plumes, banners, scutcheons, led 
horses, or open chariots, — altogether 
most mean obsequies. The march 
began at eight in the evening, and did 
not end till four o’clock the next morn- 
ing, for at each church they passed 
they stopped for a Hymn and Holy 
Water. And, by the way, we were 
told that one of these same choice 
Friars, who had been set to watching 
the body while it lay in state, fell asleep 
one night, and let the Tapers catch 
fire of the rich Velvet Mantle, lined 
with Ermine and powdered over with 
gold Flower-de-Luces, which melted 
all the candles, and burnt off one of 
the feet of the Departed, before it 
wakened him. 

It was afterwards my fortune to 
know Paris very well ; but I cannot 
say that I thought much of the place 
on first coming to it. Dirt there was 
everywhere, and the most villanous 
smells that could be imagined. A 
great deal of Show, but a vein of Ras- 
cal manners running through it all. 
Nothing neat or handsomely ordered. 
Where my Master stood to see the 
Burial procession, the balcony was 
hung with Crimson Damask and Gold ; 
but the windows behind him were 
patched in half-a-dozen jdaces with 
oiled paper. At dinner they gave you 
at least Three Courses ; but a third of 
the Repast was patched up with Sal- 
lets, Butter, Puff-paste, or some such 
miscarriages of Dishes. Nothing like 
good, wholesome, substantial Belly 
Timber. None but Germans, and 
other Strangers, wore fine clothes ; 
the French people mainly in rags, but 
powdered up to their eyebrows. Their 
coaches miserably horsed, and rope- 
harnessed ; yet, in the way of Alle- 
gories on the panels, all tawdry enough 
for the Wedding of Cupid and Psyche. 
Their shop-signs extremely laughable. 
Here some living at the Y Gue ; some 
at Venus’s Toilette ; and others at the 
Sucking Cat. Their notions of Honor 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


most preposterous. It was thought 
mighty dishonorable for any that was 
a Born Gentleman not to be in the 
Army, or in the King’s Service, but 
no dishonor at all to keep Public 
Gaming Houses ; there being at least 
five hundred persons of the first Qual- 
ity in Paris living by it. You might 
go to their Houses at all Hours of the 
Night, and find Hazard, Pharaoh, &c. 
The men who kept the gaming-tables 
at the Duke of Gesvres’ paid him 
twelve guineas a night for the priv- 
ilege. Even the Princesses of the 
Blood were mean enough to go snacks 
in the profits of the banks kept in their 
palaces. I will say nothing more of 
Paris in this place, save that it was 
the fashion of the Ladies to wear Red 
Hair of a very deep hue ; these said 
Princesses of the Blood being con- 
sumedly carroty. And I do think 
that if a Princess of the Blood was 
born with a Tail, and chose to show 
it, tied up with Pea-Green Ribbon, 
through the Placket-hole of her Gown, 
the Ladies, not only in France, but all 
over the World, would be proud to 
sport Tails with Pea-Green Ribbons, 
— or any other color that was the 
mode, — whether they were Born with 
’em or not. 

Nothing more that is worthy of 
Mention took place until our leaving 
Paris. We came away in a calash, 
that is, my Master and the Chaplain, 
riding at their Ease in that vehicle, 
while I trotted behind on a little Bidet, 
and posted it through St. Denis to 
Beauvais. So on to Abbeville, where 
they had the Impiuleuce to charge us 
Ten Livres for three Dishes of Coffee, 
and some of the nastiest Eau de Vie 
that ever I tasted ; excusing them- 
selves, the Rogues, on the score that 
Englishmen were scarce now-a-days. 
And to our great Relief, we at last 
arrived at Calais, where we had com- 
fortable Lodgings, and good fare, at a 
not too exorbitant rate. Here we had 
to wait four days for a favorable 
Wind ; and even then we found the 
Packet Boat all taken up for Passen- 
gers, and not a place on board to be 


had either for Love or Money. As 
Mr. Pinchin was desperately pressed 
to reach his Native Land, to wait for 
the next boat seemed utterly intoler- 
able to him ; so, all in a Hurry, and 
being cheated, as folks when they arc 
in a Hurry must needs be, we bar- 
gained for a Private Yatch to take us 
to Dover. The Master would hear 
of nothing less than fivc-and-twenty 
guineas for the voyage, which, with 
many Sighs and almost Weeping, my 
poor Little Master agrees to give, 
lie might have recouped himself ten 
guineas of the money; for there was 
a Great Italian Singing Woman, with 
her Chambermaid, her Valet de Cham- 
bre, a Black Boy, and a Monkey, 
bound for the King’s Opera House in 
the Haymarket, very anxious to reach 
England, and willing to pay Hand- 
somely — out of English pockets in the 
long run — for the accommodation we 
had to give ; but my capricious Mas- 
ter flies into a Tiff', and vows that lie 
w ill have no Foreign Squallerson board 
his Yatch with him. So the poor 
Signora — who w r as not at all a Bad 
looking woman, although mighty 
Brown of visage — w T as fain to wait 
for the next Packet ; and we went off 
in very great state, but still having to 
Pay with needless heaviness for our 
Whistle. And, of course, all the way 
there w r as nothing but whining and 
grumbling on his Worship’s part, that 
so short a trip should have cost him 
Twenty-five Guineas, The little Brute 
was never satisfied ; and wdien I re- 
membered the Life I had led with 
him, despite abundant Victuals, good 
Clothes, and decent Wages, I confess 
that I felt half-inclined to pitch him 
over theTaffrail, and make an End of 
him, for good and all. 

The villanous Tub which the Ras- 
cals who manned it called a Yatch 
was not Seaworthy, wouldn’t answer 
her Helm, and floundered about in the 
Trough of the Sea for a day and a 
half; and even then we did not make 
Dover, but w ere obliged to beat up for 
Ramsgate. We had been fools enough 
to pay the Fare beforehand ; and these 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


Channel Pirates were unconscionable 
enough to demand Ten Guineas more, 
swearing that they would have us up 
before the Mayor — who, I believe, 
was in league with ’em — if we did 
not disburse. Then the Master of 
the Port came upon us for Dues and 
Light Tolls ; and a Revenue Pink 
Boarded us, the Crew getting Half- 
Drunk at our Expense, under pre- 
tence of searching for contraband, 
and sticking to us till we had given 
the Midshipman a guinea, and another 
guinea to the Crew, to drink our 
Healths. 

Chapter the Sixteenth. 

JOHN DANGEROUS IS IN THE SERVICE 
OF KING GEORGE. 

It now becomes expedient for me 
to pass over no less than Fifteen Years 
of my momentous Career. I am led 
to do this for divers cogent Reasons, 
two of which I will forthwith lay be- 
fore my Reader. For the first, let me 
urge a Decent Prudence. It is not, 
Goodness knows, that I have any thing 
to be ashamed of which should hinder 
me from giving a Full, True, and Par- 
ticular Account of all the Adventures 
that befell me in these same Fifteen 
Years, with the same Minute Particu- 
larity which I bestowed upon my Un- 
happy Childhood, my varied Youth, and 
stormy Adolescence. I did dwell, per- 
haps, with a fonder circumspection and 
more scrupulous niceness upon those 
early days, inasmuch as the things we 
have first known and suffered are al- 
ways more vividly presented to our 
mind when we strive to recall ’em, 
sitting as old men in the ingle-nook, 
than are the events of complete man- 
hood. Yet do I assure those who 
have been at the pains to scan the chap- 
ters that have gone before, that it 
would be easy for me to sit down with 
the Fidelity of a Ledger-Keeper all 
the things that happened unto me from 
my eighteenth year, when I last bade 
them leave, and the year 1747, when 
I had come to be three-and-thirty years 
of age. I remember all : the Ups and 


Downs ; the Crosses and the Runs of 
Luck; the Fortunes and Misfortunes; 
the Good and the Bad Feasts I sat me 
down to, during an ever-changing and 
Troublous Period. But, as I have 
said, I have been moved thus to skip 
over a vast tract of time through Pru- 
dence. There may have been certain 
items in my life upon which, now that 
I am respectable and prosperous, I no 
more care to think of. There may 
be whole pages, close- written and full 
of Stirring Matter, which I have chosen 
to cancel ; there may be occurrences 
treated of which it is best, at this time 
of Day, to draw a Veil over. Finally, 
there may be Great Personages still 
Living who would have just cause to 
be Offended were I to tell all I know. 
The dead belong to all the World, and 
their Bones are oft-times Dug up and 
made use of by those who in the Flesh 
knew them not ; but Famous Persons 
live to a very Great Age, and it is 
sometimes scandalous to recount what 
adventures one has had with ’em in 
the days of their hot and rash Youth. 
Had I permission to publish all I am 
acquainted with, the very Hair upon 
your Head might stand up in Amaze- 
ment at some of the Matters I could 
relate : — how Mean and Base the 
Great and Powerful might become ; 
how utterly Despisable some of the 
most Superb and Arrogant Creatures 
of this our Commonwealth might ap- 
appear. But I am prudent and Hold 
my Tongue. 

Again, and for the Second Reason, 
I am led to pass over these fifteen 
years through a feeling that is akin to 
Mercy and Forbearance towards my 
Reader. For I well know how des- 
perately given is John Dangerous to 
a wordy Garrulity — how prone he is 
to make much of little things, and to 
elevate to the dignity of Important 
and Commanding Events that which 
is perchance only of the very slightest 
moment. By Prosing and Amplifying, 
by Moralising and Digressing, by spin- 
ning of yarns and wearing of reflec- 
tions threadbare, I might make a Great 
Book out of the pettiest and most un- 


131 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


eventful career ; but even in honestly 
transcribing my actual adventures, one 
by one, — the tilings I have done, and 
the Men and Women I have known, 
— I should imperceptibly swell a Nar- 
rative, which was at first meant to 
attain no great volume, to most de- 
plorable dimensions. And the world 
will no longer tolerate Huge Chron- 
icles in Folio, whether they relate to 
History, to Love or Adventure, to 
Voyages and Travels, or even to Phi- 
losophy, Mechanics, or the Useful Arts. 
The world wants smart, dandy little 
volumes, as thin as a Herring, and 
just as Salt. For these two reasons, 
then, do I nerve myself to a sudden 
leap, and entreat you now to think no 
longer of John Dangerous as a raw 
youth of eighteen summers, but as a 
sturdy, well-set man of thirty-three. 

Yet, lest mine Enemies and other 
vile Rascal Fellows that go about the 
town taking away the characters of 
honest people for mere Envy and Spite- 
fulness’ sake, lest these petty curmud- 
geons should, in their own sly saucy 
manner, Mop and Mow, and Grin and 
Whisper, that If I am silent as to Fif- 
teen Years of my Sayings and Doings, 
I have good cause for holding my 
peace, — lest these scurril Slanderers 
should insinuate that during this time 
I lay in divers Gaols for offences which 
I dare not avow, that I was concerned 
in Desperate and Unlawful Enterprises 
which brought upon me many Indict- 
ments in the King’s Courts, or that I 
■was ever Pilloried, or held to Bail for 
contemptible misdemeanors, — I do 
here declare and affirm that for the 
whole of the time I so pass over I 
earned my bread in a perfectly Honest, 
Legal, and Honorable Manner, and 
that I never once went out of the limits 
of the United Kingdom. I have heard, 
indeed, a Ridiculous Tale setting forth 
that, finding myself Destitute in Lon- 
don after the Chaplain, Mr. Pinchin, 
and I had parted company for good 
and all, I enlisted — being a tall, strap- 
ping Fellow — in the Foot Guards. 
The preposterous Fable goes on to 
say that quickly mastering my Drill, 


and being a favorite with my officers, 
whom I much pleased with my Alac- 
rity and Intelligence, although they 
were much given to laugh at my as- 
sumptions of superior Birth, and nick- 
named me “Gentleman Jack,” — I 
was promoted to the rank of Corporal, 
and might have aspired to the dignity 
of a Sergeant’s Halbert, but that in a 
Mad Frolic one night I betook myself 
to the road as a Footpad, and robbed 
a Gentleman, coming from the King’s 
Arms, Kensington, towards the Weigh 
House at Knightsbridge, of fourteen 
spade guineas, a gold watch, and a 
bottle-screw. And that being taken 
by the Hue and Cry, and had before 
Justice De Veil then sitting at the Sun 
Tavern in Bow Street, I should have 
been committed to Newgate, tried, and 
most likely have swung for the robbery, 
but for the strong intercession of my 
Captain, who was a friend of the 
Gentleman robbed. That I was indeed 
enlarged, but was not suffered to go 
scot-free, inasmuch as, being tried by 
court-martial for absence without leave 
on the night of the gentleman’s misfor- 
tune, I was sentenced to receive five 
hundred lashes at the halberts. Infa- 
mous and Absurd calumnies ! Three 
hundred lashes, forsooth * John Dan- 
gerous has scars enow on his body, 
but none from the cat-o’-nine-tails. 
His cicatrices (save those which result 
from his ill usage by his Barbarous 
Tormentors when he was a slave 
among the Moors) were all gotten in 
Fair and Honorable Warfare. This 
precious History of my ever being a 
Common Soldier is about on a piece 
with that other Impudent Farrago set- 
ting forth that, having spent what 
Money was bestowed upon me by Mr. 
Pinchin when I left his service in riot- 
ous Debauchery, and wandering about 
the Eastern end of the town in sore 
distress, I was pounced upon by a 
Press Gang, and taken on board the 
Tower Tender, whence I was shipped 
to Portsmouth, and served ten years 
Before the Mast in a Man of War. A 
foul libel again ! I should never be 


132 


ashamed of eatiug the King’s bread, 


The Strange Adventures 

God bless him ! and lighting for him, 
either as a private Fusilier or as a 
Foremast man in the Fleet ; but it has 
been my happy fortune to serve his 
Majesty, both by Sea and Land, in ca- 
pacities far higher than cither of these. 

Behold me, then, in the beginning 
of the year 1747 in the Service of his 
Sacred Majesty King George the 
Second. Behold me, further, installed 
in no common Barrack, mean Guard- 
house, or paltry Garrison Town, but 
in one of the most famous of his Maj- 
esty’s Royal Fortresses : — a place that 
had been at once and for centuries 
(ever since the days of Julius Caesar, 
as I am told) a Palace, a Citadel, and 
a Prison. In good sooth, I was one 
of the King’s Warders, and the place 
where I was stationed was the Ancient 
and Honorable Tower of London. 

Whether I had ever worn the 
King’s uniform before, either in scar- 
let as a Soldier in his armies, or of 
blue and tarpaulin as a Sailor in his 
Fleets, or of brown as a Riding Officer 
in his customs, — under which guise a 
man may often have doughty encoun- 
ters with smugglers that are trying to 
run their contraband cargoes, or to 
hide their goods in farmers’ houses, — 
or of green, as a Keeper in one of the 
Royal Chases, — I absolutely refuse to 
say. Here I am, or rather here I 
was, a Warder and in the Tower. 

I was bravely accoutred. A doublet 
of crimson cloth, with the crown, the 
Royal Cipher G. R., and a wreath of 
laurel embroidered in gold, both on 
its back aud front ; a linen ruff, well 
plaited, round my neck, sleeves puffed 
with black velvet, trunk-hose of scar- 
let, rosettes in my slashed shoes, and 
a flat hat with a border of the red and 
white roses of York and Lancaster in 
satin ribbon, — these made up my cos- 
tume. There were forty of us in the 
Tower, mounting guard with drawn 
swords at the portcullis gate and at 
the entrances to the lodgings of such 
as were in hold, and otherwise attend- 
ing upon unfortunate noblemen and 
gentlemen who were in trouble. On 
state occasions, when taking prisoners 


of Captain Dangerous. 

by water from the Tower to West- 
minster, and in preceding the Lieu- 
tenant to the outward port, we carried 
Halberts or Partisans with tassels of 
gold and crimson thread. But al- 
though our dress was identical, as 
you may sec from the prints, with 
that of the Beef-Eaters, we Tower 
Warders were of a very different kid- 
ney to the lazy hangers-on about St. 
James’s. Those fellows were -Any- 
bodies, Parasites of Back-Stairs favor- 
ites, and spies and lacqueys, trans- 
formed serving-men, butlers past 
drawing corks, grooms and porters, 
even. They had nothing to do but 
loiter about the antechambers and 
staircases of St. James’s, to walk by 
the side of his Majesty’s coach when 
he went to the Houses of Parliament, 
or to fight with the Marshalmen at 
Royal Funerals for petty spoils of 
wax-candles or shreds of black hang- 
ings. The knaves actually wore wigs, 
and powdered them, as though they 
had been so many danglers on the 
Mall. They passed their time, when 
not in requisition about the Court, 
smoking and card-playing in the tav- 
erns and mug-houses about Scotland 
Yard and Spring Gardens. They had 
the run of a few servant-wenches, be- 
longing to great people, but we did 
not envy them their sweethearts. 
Some of them, I verily believe, "were 
sunk so low as, when they were not 
masquerading at court, to become 
tavern-drawers, or ushers and cryers 
in the courts of law about Westminster. 
A very mean people were these Beef- 
eaters, and they toiled not, neither did 
they spin, for the collops they ate. 

But we brave boys of the Tower 
earned both our Beef and our Bread, 
and the abundant Beer and Strong 
Waters with which we washed our 
victuals down. We were military 
men, almost all. Some of us had 
fought at Blenheim or Families — these 
were the veterans : the very juniors 
had made the French Maison du Roy 
scamper, or else crossed bayonets 
with the Irish Brigade (a brave body 
of men, but deplorably criminal in 


133 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


carrying arms against a Gracious and 
Clement Prince) in some of those well- 
fought German Fields, in which Ilis 
Royal Highness the Duke and my 
Lord George Sackville (since Ger- 
maine, and my very good friend and 
Patron) covered themselves with im- 
mortal glory. Nay some of us, One 
of us at least, had fought and bled, to 
the amazement of his comrades and 
the admiration of his commanders, — 
never mind where. ’Tis not the luck 
of every soldier to have had his hand 
wrung by the Great Duke of Cumber- 
land, or to have been presented with 
ten guineas to drink his health withal 
by Field-Marshal Wade. We would 
have thought it vile poltroonery and 
macaronism to have worn wigs — to 
say nothing of powder — unless, indeed, 
the peruke was a true Malplaquet club 
or Dettingcn scratch. 

Our duties were no trifling ones, 
let me assure you. The Tower, as a 
place of military strength, was well 
looked after by the Regiment of Foot 
Guards and the Companies of Artil- 
lery that did garrison duties on its 
ramparts and the foot of its draw- 
bridges ; but to us was confided a 
charge much more onerous, and the 
custody of things much more precious. 
We had other matters to mind besides 
•seeing that stray dogs did not venture 
on to the Tower Green, that dust did 
not get into the cannons’ mouths, or 
that Grand Rounds received proper 
salutes. Was not the Imperial Crown 
of England in our keeping ? Had we 
not to look after the Royal diadem, 
the orb, the sceptre, the Swords of 
Justice and of Mercy, and the great 
parcel-gilt Salt Cellar that is moulded 
in the likeness of the White Tower 
itself? Did it not behove us to keep 
up a constant care and watchfulness, 
lest among the curious strangers and 
country cousins who trudged to the 
Jewel House to see all that glittering 
and golden finery, and who gave us 
shillings to exhibit them, there might 
be lurking some Rogue as dishonest 
and as desperate as that Colonel Blood 
who so nearly succeeded in gettin; 


away -with the crown and other valu- 
ables in King Charles the Second’s 
time. Oh ! I warrant you that we 
kept sharp eyes on the curious stran- 
gers and the country cousins, and 
allowed them not to go too near the 
grate behind which were those price- 
less baubles. 

But another charge had we, I trow. 
Of all times had this famous fortress 
of the Tower of London been a place 
of hold for the King’s prisoners. F elons, 
nor cutpurses, nor wantons suffered 
we indeed in our precincts, nor gave 
we the hospitality of dungeons to ; but 
of state prisoners, noblemen and gen- 
tlemen in durance for High Treason, 
or for other offences against the Royal 
State and Prerogative, had we always 
a plentiful store. Some of the great- 
est Barons — the proudest names in 
England — have pined their lives away 
within the Tower’s inexorable walls. 
Walls! why there were little dun- 
geons and casemates built in the very 
thickness of those huge mural stones. 
In ancient days I have heard that foul 
deeds were common in the fortress — 
that princes were done to Death here 
— notably the two poor Royal infants 
that the wicked Richard of Gloucester 
bid his hell-hounds smother and bury 
at the foot of the stairs in that building 
which has ever since gone by the name 
of the Bloody Tower. So, too, I am 
afraid it is a true bill that Torture was 
in the bad old days indiscriminately 
used towards both gentle and simple 
in some gloomy underground places in 
this said Tower. I have heard of a 
Sworn Tormentor and his assistants, 
whose fiendish task it was to torture 
poor creatures’ souls out of their mis- 
erable bodies, and of a Chirurgeou 
who had to watch lest the agonies 
used upon ’em should be too much for 
human endurance, and so, putting 
’em out of their misery, rob the heads- 
man of his due, the scaffold of its 
prey, and the vile mobile that congre- 
gate at public executions of their raree 
show. Of “ Scavenger’s Daughters,” 
Racks, Thumbscrews, iron boots, and 
wedges, and other horrible engines of 


134 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


pain, I have heard many dismal tales 
told ; but all had long fallen into dis- 
use before my time. The last persons 
tortured within the Tower walls were, 
I believe, Colonel Faux (Guido) and 
his confederates, for their most abom- 
inable Gunpowder Plot, which was to 
put an end to the Protestant Religion 
and the illustrious House of Stuart at 
one fell blow ; but happily came to 
nothing, through the prudence of my 
Lord Monteagle, and the well-nigh 
superhuman sagacity of his Majesty 
King James the First. Guy and his 
accomplices they tortured horribly ; 
and did uot even give ’em the honor 
of being beheaded on Tower Ilill, — 
they being sent away as common trai- 
tors to Old Palace Yard (close to the 
scene of their desperately meditated, 
but fortunately abortive crime), and 
there half-hanged, cut down while yet 
warm, disemboweled, their Hearts 
and Inwards taken out and burnt by 
Gregory (that was hangman then, 
and that, as Gregory Brandon, had a 
coat of arms given him as a gentle- 
man, through a fraud practised upon 
Garter King), and their mangled 
bodies — the heads severed — cut into 
quarters, well coated with pitch, and 
stuck upon spikes over London Bridge, 
east Portcullis, Ludgate, Temple Bar, 
and other places of public resort, ac- 
cording to the then bloody-minded 
custom, and the statute in that case 
made and provided. But after Colo- 
nel Guido Faux, Rack, Thumbscrews, 
boots, and wedges, and Scavenger’s 
daughters fell into a decline, from 
which, thank God, they have never, 
in this fair realm of England, recov- 
ered. I question even if the Jesuit 
Garnett and his fellows, albeit most 
barbarously executed, were tortured 
in prison ; but it is certain that when 
Felton killed the Duke of Bucks at 
Portsmouth, and was taken red- 
handed, the Courtiers, Parasites, and 
other cruel persons that were about 
the King, would fain have had him 
racked ; but the public, — which by 
this time had begun to inquire pretty 


out that Felton should not be tor- 
mented (their not loving the Duke of 
Bucks too much may have been one 
reason for their wishiug some degree 
of leniency to be shown to the assas- 
sin), and the opinion of the Judges 
being taken, those learned Persons, in 
full court of King’s Bench assembled, 
decided that Torture was contrary to the 
Law of England, and could not legally 
be used upon any of the King’s sub- 
jects howsoever guilty he might have 
been. 

But I confess that when I first took 
up service as a Tower Warder, and 
gazed upon those horrible implements 
of Man’s cruelty and hard-heartedness 
collected in the Armory, I imagined 
with dismay that, all rusty as they had 
grown, there might be occasions for 
them to be used upon the persons of 
unfortunate captives. For I had lived 
much abroad, *and knew what devilish 
freaks were often indulged in by arbi- 
trary and unrestrained power. But 
my comrades soon put my mind at 
ease, and pointed out to me that few, 
very few, of these instruments of An- 
guish were of English use or origin at 
all ; but that the great majority of 
these wicked things were from among 
the spoils of the Great Armada, when 
the proud Spaniards, designing to in- 
vade this free and happy country with 
their monstrous Flotilla of Caravels 
and Galleons, provided numerous tools 
of Torture for despitcfully using the 
Heretics (as they called them) who 
would not obey the unrighteous man- 
dates of a foreign despot, or submit to 
the domination (usurped) of the 
Bishop of Rome. And so tender iu- 
deed of the bodies of the King’s pris- 
oners had the Tower authorities be- 
come, that the underground dungeons 
were now never used, commodious 
apartments being provided for the 
noblemen and gentlemen in hold : and 
a pretty penny they had to pay for 
their accommodation ; five guineas a 
day, besides warder and gentlemen 
gaoler’s fees, being the ordinary charge 
for a nobleman, and half that sum for 
a knight and private esquire. Besides 


sharply about Things of State, — cned 


135 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


this, the Lieutenant of the Tower had 
a gratuity of thirty pounds from every 
peer that came into his custody, and 
twenty pounds for every gentleman 
writing himself Armigcr , and in default 
could seize upon their cloaks : whence 
arose a merry saying — u best go to the 
Tower like a peeled carrot than come 
forth like one.” 

There were even no chains used in 
this state prison ; of fetters and man- 
acles we had indeed a plenitude, all 
of an antique pattern and covered with 
rust ; but no irons such as are put 
upon their prisoners by vulgar gaolers 
in Newgate and elsewhere. I have 
heard say that when poor Counsellor 
Layer, that was afterwards hanged, 
drawn, and quartered as a Jacobite, 
and his head stuck atop of Temple 
Bar hard by his own chambers, — 
was first brought for safer custody to 
the Tower, breakings out of Newgate 
having been common, the Government 
sent down word that, as a deep-dyed 
conspirator and desperate rebel, he 
was to be double-ironed. Upon this 
Mr. Lieutenant flies into a mighty 
heat, and taking boat to Whitehall, 
waits on Mr. Secretary at the Cock- 
pit, and tells him plainly that such an 
indignity towards his Majesty’s prison- 
ers in the Tower was never heard of, 
that no such base modes of coercion 
as chains or bilboes had ever been 
known in use since the reign of King 
Charles I., and that the King’s ward- 
ers were there to see that the prisoners 
did not attempt Evasiou. To which 
Mr. Secretary answered, with a grim 
smile, that notwithstanding all the 
keenness of the watch and ward, he 
had often heard of prisoners escaping 
from durance in the Tower, notably 
mentioning the case of my Lord Ni- 
thesdale, who escaped in his lady’s 
clothes, and Avithout more ado in- 
formed the Lieutenant that Counsellor 
Layer must be chained as directed, 
even if the chains had to be forged 
expressly for him. Upon which Mr. 
Lieutenant took a \~ery surly leave of 
the Great Man, cursing him as he 
comes doAvn the steps for a Thief- 


136 


catcher and Tyburn purveyor, and 
hied him to Newgate Avhcre he bor- 
rowed a set of double-irons from the 
Peachum or Lockit, or Avhatever the 
fellow’s name Avas that kept that Den 
of Thieves. And even then, Avhen 
they had gotten the chains to the 
ToAver, none of the warders kneAV 
Iioav to put them on, or to sully their 
fingers Avith such hangman’s Avork ; and 
so they were fain to have a blacksmith 
with his anvil, and a couple of turn- 
keys doAvn from Newgate, to rivet the 
chains upon the poor gentleman’s 
limbs ; he being at the time half dead 
of a Strangury ; but so cruel was 
justice in those days. 

When I first came to the ToAver, 
Ave had but feAV prisoners ; for it Avas 
before the Great Rebellion of the ’F orty- 
five ; and for a few years previous the 
times had been after a manner quiet. 
Noav and then some notorious Jacobite, 
Seminarist, or seditious person, Avas 
taken up ; but he was rarely of suffi- 
cient importance to be confined in our 
illustrious Prison ; and was either had 
to Newgate, or else confined in the 
lodgings of a King’s Messenger till 
his examinations were over, and he 
Avas either committed or Enlarged. 
These Messengers kept, in those days, 
a kind of Sponging Houses for High 
Treason, Avhere Gentlemen Traitors 
Avho Avere not in very great peril lived, 
as it were, at an ordinary, and paid 
much dearer for their meat and lodg- 
ing than though they had been at some 
bailiff’s lock-up in Cursitor Street, or 
Tooke’s Court, or the Pied Bull in the 
Borough. We had, it is true, for a 
long time a Romanist Bishop that Avas 
suspected of being in correspondence 
Avitli St. Germain’s, and lay for a long 
time under detention. He Avas a 
merry old soul, and most learned man ; 
Avould dine very gaily Avith Mr. Lieu- 
tenant, or his deputy, or the Fort Ma- 
jor, SAvig his bottle of claret, aud play 
a game of tric-trac afterwards ; and 
it was something laughable to watch 
the quiet cunning Avay in which he 
Avould seek to convert us Warders who 
had the guarding of him to the Roman- 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


ist faith. They let him out at last 
upon something they called a Nolle 
prosequi of the Attorney-General, or 
some such like dignitary of the law — 
which nolle prosequi I take to be a kind 
of habeas corpus for gentlefolks. lie 
was as liberal to us when he departed 
as his means would allow ; for I believe 
that save his cassock, his breviary, a 
gold cross round his neck, and episco- 
pal ring, and a portmantel full of linen, 
the old gentleman had neither goods 
nor chattels in the wide world : indeed 
we heard that the Lieutenant lent him, 
on leaving, a score of gold pieces, for 
friendship-sake, to distribute among 
us. But he went away — to foreign 
parts, I infer — -with flying colors; for 
every body loved the old Bishop, all 
Romanist and suspected Jacobite as 
he was. 

Then came that dreadful era of re- 
bellion of which I have spoken, and 
we Tower Warders found that our 
holiday time w^as over. Whilst the 
war still raged in Scotland, scarcely a 
day passed without some person of 
consequence being brought either by 
water to Traitor’s Gate, or by a strong 
escort of Horse and Foot to the Tower 
Postern ; not for active participation 
in the rebellion, but as a measure of 
safety, and to prevent worse harm being 
done. And many persons of conse- 
quence, trust me, saved their heads by 
being laid by the heels for a little time 
while the hue and cry was afoot, and 
Habeas Corpus suspended. Fast bind, 
safe find, is a true proverb ; and you 
may thank your stars, even if your 
enemies have for a time bound you 
with chains and with links of iron, if, 
when the stormy season has gone past, 
you find your head still safe on your 
shoulders. Now it was a great Lord 
who was brought to the Tower, and 
from -whom Mr. Lieutenant did not 
forget to claim his thirty-pound fee on 
entrance; for “here to-day, gone to- 
morrow,” he reasoned, and so shot his 
game as soon as he had good parview 
of the same. Now it was some Che- 
shire or Lancashire Squire, snatched 
away from his Inn, at the Hercules’ 


Pillars, or the Catharine Wheel in the 
Borough, as being vehemently suspect- 
ed of Jacobitism. These gentlemen 
mostly took their captivity in a very 
cheerful and philosophical manner. 
They would call for a round of spiced 
beef, a tankard of ale, and a pipe of 
tobacco, so soon as ever they were 
fairly bestowed in their lodgings ; drank 
to the King — taking care not to let us 
know whether his name began with a 
G or a J, with many jovial ha-has, 
and were as happy as the day was long, 
so it seemed to us, if they had but a 
pack of cards and a volume of the 
Gentleman’s Recreation, or Academy 
of Field Sports. What bowls of punch, 
too, they would imbibe o’ nights, and 
what mad carouses they would have ! 
Such roaring Squires as these would 
have been much better bestowed in 
the Messengers* Houses; but these 
were all full, likewise the common 
gaols ; nay, the debtors’ prisons and 
vile sponging-houses were taken up by 
Government for the temporary incar- 
ceration of suspected persons. 

How well do I remember the dread- 
ful amazement and consternation which 
broke over this city -when the news 
came that the Prince — I mean the 
Pretender — had utterly routed the 
King’s troops commanded by Sir 
John Cope at Prestonpans ; that the 
Misguided Young Man had entered 
Edinborough at the head of a furious 
mob of Highlandmen, whose prepos- 
terous style of dress I never could 
abide, and who in those days we 
Southrons held as being very little 
better than painted Savages ; that the 
ladies of the Scottish capital had all 
mounted the white cockades, and were 
embroidering scarves for the Pretender 
and his officers, and that the Castle 
of Edinborough alone held out ’gainst 
this monstrous uprising to destroy 
authority ! But how much greater 
was the Dismay in London when we 
learnt that the Rebels, not satisfied 
with their conquests in his Majesty’s 
Scottish Dominions, had been so ven- 
turous as to invade England itself, 
and had actually advanced so far as 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


the trading town of Derby ! Then 
did those who had been long, albeit 
obscurely, suspected of Jacobitism, 
come forth from their lurking holes 
and corners, and almost opeuly avow 
their preference for the House of 
Stuart. Then did very many respec- 
table persons, formerly thought to be 
excellently well affected towards King 
George’s person and Government, be- 
come waverers, or prove themselves 
the Turncoats they had always, in 
secret, been, and seditiously prophesy 
that the days of the Hanoverian 
dynasty" were numbered. Then did 
spies and traitors abound, together 
with numbers of alarming rumors, that 
the Chevalier had advanced as far as 
Barnet on the Great North Road ; that 
his Majesty was about to convey him- 
self away to Hanover ; that the Duke 
of Cumberland was dead ; that bar- 
rels of gunpowder had been discov- 
ered in the crypt beneath Guild- 
hall, and in the vaults of the Chapel 
Royal ; that mutiny was rife among 
the troops ; that the Bank of England 
was about to break, with sundry other 
distracting reports and noises. 

Of course authority did all it could 
to reassure the public mind, tossed in 
a most tempestuous manner as it was 
by conflicting accounts. Authority 
bestirred itself to put down seditious 
meetings by proclamation, and to in- 
terdict residence in the capital to all 
known Papists ; whereby several most 
estimable Catholic gentlemen (as many 
there be of that old Faith) were forced 
to leave their Town Houses, and be- 
take themselves to mean and incon- 
venient dwellings in the country. The 
gates of Temple Bar were now shut, 
on sudden alarms, two or three times, 
a week ; as though the closing of these 
rotten portals could in any way impede 
the progress of rebellion, or do any- 
thing more than further to hamper 
the already choked-up progress of the 
streets. The Lord Mayor was mighty 
busy calling out the Train-bands, and 
having them drilled in Moorficlds, for 
the defence of the City; and a mighty 
line show those citizen soldiers would 


138 


have made no doubt to the bare-legged 
Ilighlandmen, had they come that 
way. The Guards at all the posts at 
the Court end of the town were 
doubled, and we at the Tower put 
ourselves into a perfect state of de- 
fence. Cannon were run out ; matches 
kept lighted ; whole battalions main- 
tained under arms ; munitions and 
provisions of war laid in, as though 
to withstand a regular siege ; draw- 
bridges pulled up and portcullises 
lowered, with great clanking of chains 
and gnashing of old iron teeth ; — and 
rich sport it was to see those old rust- 
eaten engines once more brought into 
gear again. 

But, as the Wise Man saitli that a 
soft answer turneth away wrath, so 
do we often find that a merry word 
spoken in season will do more than all 
your Flaming Ordinances, and Terrific 
Denunciations of Fire and Sword. 
And although at this time (beginning 
of the year 1746) authority very 
properly exerted itself to procure 
obedience to the constitution, by in- 
stilling Awe into men’s minds, anti 
did breathe nothing in its official 
documents but heading, hanging, and 
quartering, with threats of bombard- 
ments, free quarters, drum-head courts- 
martial, chains, gags, fines, imprison- 
ment, and sequestration, — yet I ques- 
tion whether so much good was done 
by these towards the stability of the 
cause of the Protestant Religion and 
King George, or so much harm to 
that of the Pretender, Popery, brass 
money, and wooden shoes, as by a 
little series of Pamphlets put forth by 
the witty Mr. Henry Fielding, a writer 
of plays and novels then much in 
vogue ; but a sad loose fish, although 
he afterwards, as I am told, did good 
service to the State as one of the jus- 
tices of peace for Middlesex, and 
helped to put down many notorious 
gangs of murderers, highwaymen, 
and footpads infesting the metropolis. 
This Mr. Fielding — whom his inti- 
mates used to call Harry, and whom 
1 have often seen lounging in the 
Temple Gardens, or about the gaming- 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


houses in St. James’s Street, and whom 
I have often met, I grieve to say, in 
the very worst of company under the 
Piazzas in Covent Garden much over- 
taken in liquor, and his fine Lace 
clothes and curled periwig all be- 
smirched and bewrayed after a carouse 
— took up the Hanoverian cause very 
hotly, — having perhaps weighty rea- 
sons for so doing, — and, making the 
very best use of his natural gifts and 
natural weapons, namely, a very 
strong and caustic humor, with most 
keen and trenchant satire, did infinite 
harm to the Pretender’s side by laugh- 
ing at him and his adherents. He 
published, probably at the charges of 
authority, — for he was a needy gen- 
tleman, always in love, in liquor, or 
in debt, — a paper called the True 
Patriot , in which the Jacobites were 
most mercilessly treated. Notably do 
I recall a sort of sham diary or alman- 
ack, purporting to be written by an 
honest tradesman of the City during 
the predicted triumph of the Preten- 
der, and in which such occurrences 
were noted down as London being at 
the mercy of Highlanders and Friars ; 
Walbrook church and many others 
being razed to the ground ; Father 
O’Blaze, a Dominican, exulting over 
it ; Queen Anne’s statue at Paul’s 
taken away, and a large Crucifix 
erected in its place ; the Bank, South- 
Sea, India Houses, &c., converted 
into convents ; Father Macdagger, the 
Royal confessor, preaching at St. 
James’s ; three Anabaptists hung at 
Tyburn, attended by their ordinary, 
Mr. Machenly (a grotesque name for 
the ranting fellow who was wont to be 
known as Orator Henley) ; Father 
Poignardini, an Italian Jesuit, made 
Privy-Seal ; four Heretics burned in 
Smithfield; the French Ambassador 
made a Duke, with precedence; Cape 
Breton given back to the French, with 
Gibraltar and Port Mahon to the 
Spaniards ; the Pope’fc nuncio entering 
London, and the Lord Mayor and 
Aldermen kissing his feet ; an office 
opened in Drury Lane for the sale of 
papistical Pardons and Indulgences; 


with the like prophecies calculated to 
arouse the bigotry of the lower and 
middle orders, and to lash them into a 
religious as well as a political frenzy. 
For a cry of u No Popery” has ever 
acted upon a true-born Englishman as 
a red rag does on a bull. Perhaps the 
thing that went best down of all Mr. 
Fielding’s drolleries, and tickled the 
taste of the town most amazingly, 
was the passagfe where he made his 
honest London tradesman enter in his 
diary to this effect : “ My little boy 
Jacky taken ill of the itch. He had 
been on the parade Avith his godfather 
the day before to see the Life Guards, 
and had just touched one of their 
plaids.” One of the King’s Ministers 
said long aftewards that this passage 
touching the itch was Avorth two regi- 
ments of horse to the cause of govern- 
ment. At this distance of time one 
doesn’t see much wit in a scurrilous 
lampoon, of which the gist was to 
taunt one’s neighbors Avith being 
afflicted Avith a disease of the skin : 
and, indeed, the lower ranks of Eng- 
lish were, in those days, anything 
but free from similar ailments, and, 
in London at least, were in their per- 
sons and manners inconceivably filthy. 
But ’tis astonishing Avhat a mark you 
can make Avith a coarse jest, if you 
only go far enough, and forsAvear jus- 
tice and decency. 

Strange but true is it to remark 
that, in the midst of all such tremen- 
dous convulsions as Avars, battles, 
sieges, rebellions, and other martial 
conflagrations, men and A\ T omen and 
children do eat and drink, and love 
and marry, and beget other babes of 
humanity, and at last Die and turn to 
dust, precisely as though the Avorld — 
or rather the concerns of that gross 
Orb — were all going on in their ordi- 
nary jog-trot manner. Although from 
day to day Ave people in London knew 
not Avhether before the sun set the 
dreaded pibroch of the Highland 
Clans might not be heard at Charing 
Cross, and the barbarian rout of 
Caterans that formed the Prince, — I 
mean the Chevalier, — I mean the 


139 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


Pretender’s Army, scattered all about 
the City, plundering our Chattels, and 
ravaging our fair English homes ; 
although, for aught men knew, another 
month, nay another week, might see 
King George the Second toppled from 
his Throne, and King James the Third 
installed, with his Royal Highness 
Charles Edward Prince of Wales as 
Regent ; although it was but a toss-up 
whether the Archbishop of Canterbury 
should not be ousted from Lambeth 
by a Popish Prelate, and the whole 
country reduced to Slavery and Bank- 
ruptcy ; — yet to those who lived quiet 
lives, and kept civil tongues in their 
heads, all things went on pretty much 
as usual: and each day had its evil, 
and sufficient for the day was the evil 
thereof. That the Highlandmen w r ere 
at Derby did not prevent the Hostess 
of the Stone Kitchen — that famous 
Tavern in the Tower — from bringing 
in one’s reckoning and insisting on 
payment. That there w'as consterna- 
tion at St. James’s, with the King 
meditating flight and the Royal Fam- 
ily in tears and swooning, did not save 
the little schoolboy a whipping if he 
knew not his lesson after morning 
call. It will be so, I suppose, until 
the end of the world. We must needs 
eat and drink, and feel heat and cold, 
and marry or be given in marriage, 
whatsoever party prevail, and what- 
soever King carries crow n and sceptre ; 
and however dreadful the crisis, w r e 
must have our Dinners, and fleas will 
bite us, and corns pinch our Feet. So 
while all the Public were talking 
about the Rebellion, all the world went 
nevertheless to the Playhouses, where 
they played loyal Pieces and sang 
“ God save great George our King ” 
every night ; as also to Balls, Ridottos, 
Clubs, Masquerades, Drums, Routs, 
Concerts, and Pharaoh parties. They 
read Novels and flirted their fans, and 
powdered and patched themselves, and 
distended their coats with hoops, just 
as though there were no such persons 
in the w r orld as the Duke of Cumber- 
laud and Charles Edward Stuart. And 
m like manner we Warders in the 


Tower, though ready for any martial 
emergency that might turn up, were 
by no means unnecessarily afeard or 
distraught with anxiety ; but ate and 
drank our fill, joked the pretty girH 
who came to see the shows in the 
Tower, and trailed our halberts in our 
usual jovial devil-me-carc manner, as 
true Cavaliers, Warders in the service 
of his Majesty the King, should do. 

By and hy came the news of Stir- 
ling and Falkirk, after the disastrous 
retreat of the Highlandmen back into 
England. And then happened that 
short but tremendous fight of Drum- 
mossie Moor, commonly called the 
Battle of Culloden, where claymores 
and Lochaber axes clashed and gliuted 
for the last time against English broad- 
swords and bayonets. After this was 
what was called the pacification of the 
Highlands, meaning that the Duke 
and his dragoons devastated all before 
them with fire and sword ; and then 
“retributive justice” had its turn, and 
the work of the Tower Warders be- 
gan in earnest. 

Poor creatures ! theirs w r as a hard 
fate. At Carlisle, at Manchester, at 
Tyburn, and at Kennington Common, 
London, how many unhappy persons 
suffered death in its most frightful 
form, to say nothing of the unspeak- 
able ignominy of being dragged on a 
hurdle to the place of execution, and 
mangled in the most horrible manner 
by the Hangman’s butcherly knife, 
merely because they held that King 
James, and not King George, w r as the 
rightful sovereign of these realms ! Is 
there in all History — at least insomuch 
as it touches our sentiments and feel- 
ings — a more lamentable and pathetic 
narration than the story of Jemmy 
Dawson ? This young man, Mr. 
James Dawson by name, — foi by the 
endearing aggravative- of Jemmy he 
is only known in Mr. William Shcn- 
stone’s charming ballad (the gentle- 
man that lived at the Leasowes, aud 
writ The Schoolmistress, among other 
pleasing pieces, and spent so much 
money upon Ornamental Gardening), 
— this Mr. James Daw r son, I say, w r as 


140 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


the son of highly reputable parents, 
dwelling, by some, ’tis said, in the 
county of Lancashire, by others, in the 
county of Middlesex. At all events, 
his father was a Gentleman of good 
estate, who strove hard to bring up 
his son in the ways of piety and virtue. 
But the youth was wild and froward, 
and would not listen to the sage Coun- 
sels that were continually given him. 
After the ordiuary grammar-school 
education, during which course he 
much angered his teachers, — less by 
his reckless and disobedient conduct 
than by his perverse flinging away of 
his opportunities, and manifest ignor- 
ing of the parts with which he had 
been gifted by Heaven, — he was sent 
to the University of Oxford to com- 
plete the curriculum of studies neces- 
sary to make him a complete gentle- 
man. And I have heard, indeed, that 
he was singularly endowed with the 
properties requisite for the making of 
that very rare animal : — that he was 
quick, ready, generous, warm-hearted, 
skilful, and accomplished, — that he 
rode, and drove, and shot, and fenced, 
and swam, and fished in that marvel- 
lously finished manner only possible to 
those who seem to have been destined 
by a capricious fate to do so well that 
which they have never learned to do. 
And at college, who but Jemmy Daw- 
son — who but he? For a wicked 
prank, or a mad carouse ; for a trick 
to be played on a proctor, or a kiss to 
be taken by stealth, — who such a 
Master of Arts as our young Under- 
graduate? But at his lectures and 
chapels and repetitions he was (al- 
though always with a vast natural 
capacity) an inveterate Idler ; and he 
did besides so continually violate and 
outrage the college rules and discipline, 
that his Superiors, after repeated ad- 
monitions, gatings, impositions, and 
rustications (which are a kind of tem- 
porary banishment), were at last fain 
solemnly to expel him from the Uni- 
versity. Upon which his father dis- 
carded him from his house, vowing 
that he would leave his broad acres 
(which were not entailed) to his 


Nephew, and bidding him go to the 
Devil ; whither he accordingly pro- 
ceeded, but by a very leisurely and 
circuitous route. But the young Rogue 
had already made a more perilous 
journey than this, for he had fallen in 
Love with a young Madam of exceed- 
ing Beauty, and of large Fortune in 
her own right, the daughter of a neigh- 
boring Baronet. And she, to her 
sorrow, poor soul, became as desper- 
ately enamored of this young Scape- 
grace, and would have run away with 
him, I have no doubt, had he asked 
her, but for a spark of honor which still 
remained in that reckless heart, and 
forbade his linking the young girl, all 
good and pure as she was, to so des- 
perate a life as his. And so he went 
wandering for a time up and down the 
country, swaggering with his boon 
companions, and pawning his Father’s 
credit in whatsoever inns and pot- 
houses he came unto, until, in the 
beginning of that fatal year ’46, he 
must needs find himself at Manchester 
without a Shilling in his pocket, or 
the means of raising one. It was then 
the time that the town of Manchester 
had been captured, in the Pretender’s 
interest, by a Scots Sergeant and a 
Wench; and the notorious Colonel 
Towneley was about raising the Man- 
chester Regiment of Lancashire Lads 
to fight for Prince Charlie. Desperate 
Jemmy Dawson enlisted under Towne- 
ley ; and soon, being a young fellow 
of good figure and shining talents, was 
made a Captain. But the ill-fated 
Manchester Regiment was ere long 
broken up; and Jemmy Dawson, with 
Colonel Towneley himself, and many 
other of the officers, were captured. 
They were all tried at the Assizes 
held after the Assizes at St. Margaret’s 
Hill, Southwark ; and James Dawson, 
being convicted of high treason, was 
sentenced to the usual horrible pun- 
ishment for that offence. He was 
drawn on a hurdle to Kennington 
Common ; he was hanged, disem- 
bowelled, and quartered: but the 
young Madam of whom I have spoken 
was true to him unto the last. For 


many days following the sentence she 
vainly solicited his pardon ; but finding 
all useless, she on the fatal morning 
(having trimmed a shroud for him 
overnight, in which, poor Soul, his 
mangled remains were not to rest) 
followed him in a Mourning Coach to 
Kenuiugton Common. She saw the 


Dreadful Tragedy played out to its 
very last Act; and then she just turned 
ou her Side in the Coach, and with 
a soft murmur, breathing Jemmy’s 
Name, she Died. Surely a story so 
piteous as this needs no comment. 
And by Heaven it is True ! 


Chapter the Seventeenth. 

REBELLION IS MADE AN END OF, AND 

AFTER SOME FURTHER SERVICE WITH 

HIS MAJESTY I GO INTO BUSINESS ON 

MY OWN ACCOUNT. 

Memorandum. — About a year be- 
fore the Rebellion, as the Earl of Kil- 
marnock was one day walking in his 
Garden, he was suddenly alarmed 
with a fearful Shriek, which, while he 
was reflecting on with Astonishment, 
was soon after repeated. On this he 
went into the House, and inquired of 
his Lady and all the Servants, but 
could not discover from whom or 
whence the Cry proceeded ; but miss- 
ing his Lady’s Woman, he was in- 
formed that she was gone into an 
Upper Room to inspect some Linen. 
Whereupon the Earl and his Lady 
went up and opened the Door, which 
was only latched. But no sooner did 
the Gentlewoman within set eyes on 
his Lordship’s face than she fainted 
away. When, proper aid being given 
to her, she was brought to herself, 
they asked her the meaning of what 
they had heard and seen. She replied, 
that while she sat sewing some Linen 
she had taken up to mend, the Door 
opened of itself, and a Bloody Head 
entered the Room, and rolled upon the 
floor ; that this dreadful Sight had 
made her cry out, and then the Bloody 
Head disappeared ; that in a few 
Moments she saw the same frightful 
Apparition again, on which she re- 
peated her Shrieks ; and at the third 
time she fainted away, but was just 


recovered when she saw his Lordship 
coming in, which had made the Im- 
pression on her they had been witness 
of. 

This Relation given by the affright- 
ed Gentlewoman was only laughed at 
and ridiculed as the Effect of Spleen- 
Vapors, or the Frenzy of a deluded 
Imagination, and was thought no more 
of, till one Night, when the Earl of 
Kilmarnock, sitting round a Bowl by 
the Winter Fire with my Lord Gal- 
loway, — aud it is at such a Time that 
men are most prone to fall-to telling 
of Ghost Stories, — and their Lord- 
ships’ conversation turning on Spectres 
and Apparitions, the vulgar notions of 
which they were deriding, the terrible 
tale of the Bloody Head was brought 
up, and then dismissed as the idle 
fancy of a Hoity-toity Tirewoman. 
But after Kilmarnock had engaged in 
the Rebellion, and Lord Galloway was 
told of it, he instantly recollected this 
Story, and said, “ I will wager a 
dozen Magnums of Claret, and my 
best Silver-laced Justaucorps, that 
my Lord Kilmarnock will lose his 
Head.” 

Nobody took his bet, not daring 
thus to trifle with the lives of the 
Quality ; but that Scots Lord lost his 
Head, notwithstanding ; and I saw it 
cut off on Tower Hill in the latter 
summer of the year ’46. 

This story of the Bloody Head was 
common Talk among us Warders at 
the time, — who were full as supersti- 
tious as other Folks, you may be sure. 
Many such Legends are there, too 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


current of Persons who were to die 
Violent Deaths at the hands of the 
Public Executioner, being forewarned 
many years before of their Impending 
Fate. And sometimes hath the Moni- 
tion come nearer to the Catastrophe, 
as in the case of K. C. the I?!, who, 
entering Westminster Ilall at that Un- 
natural Assize presided over by Brad- 
shaw, the Gold Head fell off his 
Walking-Staff, and rolled on thePave- 
ment*of the Hall among the Soldiers; 
nor, when it was restored to him, 
could any Efforts of his make it re- 
main on. Also it is said of my Lord 
Derwentwater, that the last time he 
went a hunting in the north, before he 
joined the Old Chevalier of St. George, 
his whippers-in unearthed a litter of 
Fox-cubs, every one of which Vermin 
had been born without Heads. And 
as well authenticated is it, that when 
my Lord Balmerino (that suffered on 
Tower Hill with the Earl of Kilmar- 
nock) was coming back condemned to 
Death from his Trial before his Peers 
at Westminster, his Lordship being of 
a merry, Epicurean temper, and car- 
ing no more for Death than a Sailor 
does for a wet Shirt, stopped the coach 
at a Fruiterer’s at Charing Cross, 
where he must needs ask Mr. Lieut- 
enant’s Attendant to buy him some 
Honey-Blobbs, which is the Scottish 
name for ripe Gooseberries. 

“ And King Geordie maun pay for 
the bit fruitie ; for King James’s auld 
soldier has nae siller of his ain save 
twa guineas for Jock Headsman,” 
quoth he in his jocular manner, mean- 
ing that those about him must pay for 
the Gooseberries; for indeed this Lord 
was very poor, and I have heard was, 
when in town, so much driven as to 
borrow money from the Man who 
keeps the Tennis-court in James Street, 
Haymarket. 

Well, it so happened that the Sea- 
son was a backward one ; and the 
Fruiterer sends his duty out to his 
Lordship, saying that he has no ripe 
Gooseberries, but that of green ones 
lie lias a store, to which that un- 


fortunate Nobleman is heartily wel- 
come. 

“I’ll e’en try one,” says my Lord ; 
and from a Punnet they brought him 
lie picks a Green Gooseberry ; when, 
wonderful to relate, it swells in his 
hands to the bigness at least of an 
Egg-plum, and turns the color of Blood. 
“ The de’il’s in the IIoney-Blobb,” 
cries my Lord in a tiff, and flings it 
out of window, where it made a great 
red stain on the pavement. 

And this the Warder who stood by, 
and the Messenger who was in the , 
coach itself, told me. 

Less need is there to speak of such 
strange adventures as my Lady Nitli- 
isdale’s child (that was born soon 
after her Lord’s escape from the Tower, 
in which, with such a noble valor and 
self-sacrifice, she aided him) being 
brought into the World with a broad 
Axe figured, as though by a Limner, 
on its Neck ; or of the Countess of 
Cromartie’s infant (she likewise Lay- 
in while the Earl was under sentence) 
having a thin red line or thread right 
round its neck. These things are 
perhaps to be accounted more as 
Phenomena of nature than as ominous 
prognostications, and I so dismiss ’em. 
But it is worth while to note that, for 
all the good authority we have of 
Lord Kilmarnock’s Waiting-woman 
being affrighted by the vision of a 
Bloody Head, the story itself, or at 
least something germane to it, is as 
old as the Hills. During my travels 
in Sweden, I was told of a very strange 
mischance that had happened to one of 
their Kings who was named Charles; 
— but Charles the what, I do confess 
I know not ; — who walking one even- 
ing in his garden, saw all at once a 
Wing of the Palace, that had been 
shut up and deserted for Twenty years, 
all blazing with Light from the Win- 
dows, as for some great Festival. And 
his Majesty, half suspecting this might 
be some Masquerading prank on the 
part of the Court Ladies, and half 
afraid that there was mischief in it, 
drew his Sword, and calling upon a 


143 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


brace of his Gentlemen to follow him, 
stave in a door and came into a Great 
Old Hall, that was the principal apart- 
ment in the said Wing. And at the 
upper End, where the ancient Throne 
of his ancestors was long since gone 
to Rags and Tatters, and abandoned 
to Dust and Cobwebs, he saw, sitting 
on the chair of Estate, and crowned, 
a little child that was then but a boy 
— the Duke of Sudermania. And lo ! 
as he gazed upon him a Dreadful 
Ball, that seemed fashioned in the 
similitude of his own Head, showed 
itself under the Throne, rolled down 
the steps, and so came on to his very 
Feet, where it stopped, splashing his 
Boots unto the very ancle with Gore. 
The tale of the Bloody Boots, as ’tis 
called, is still quite familiar to every 
Nurse in Sweden ; but I never heard 
how it ended, or whether King Charles 
had his Head cut off in the Long-run ; 
but every Swede will swear to the 
Story ; and as for the Boots, I have 
heard that they are to be seen, 
with the dark brown stains of the 
Blood still upon ’em, in a glass case 
at the House of one Mr. Herdstrom, 
who sells Aqua Vitas over the Mil- 
liner’s in the Bogbindersgade at Stock- 
holm. 

’Twas in the summer of 1747 that 
I put off my Warder’s dress for good 
and all, the Rebellion being by this 
time quite Dead and crushed out ; but 
before I laid down my halbert ’twas 
my duty to assist at the crowning 
consummation of that disastrous Trag- 
edy. One of the Prime Traitors in 
the Scottish Risings had been, it is 
well known, the notorious Simon 
Fraser, Lord Lovat, of Castle Downie, 
in Scotland, then come to be Eighty 
years old, and as atrocious an old 
Villain as ever lived, but so cunning 
that he cheated the Gallows for three 
quarters of a century, and died like a 
Gentleman, by the Axe, at last. He 
had been mixed up in every plot for 
the bringing back of King James ever 
since the Old Chevalier’s Father gave 
up the Ghost at St. Germain’s, yet 
had somehow managed to escape scot- 


free from Attainder and Confiscation. 
Even in the ’45, when he sent the 
Clan Fraser to join the Young Cheva- 
lier, he tried his best to make his poor 
Son, the Master of Lovat (a very 
virtuous and gallant young Gentle- 
man), the scapegoat for his misdeeds, 
playing Fast and Loose between France 
and the Jacobites on one side, and the 
Lord Justice Clerk and the King’s 
Government on the other. But Jus- 
tice had him on the hip at last", and 
the old Fox was caught. They brought 
him to London by Easy Stages, as ho 
was, or pretended to be, mighty In- 
firm ; and while he was resting at an 
Inn at St. Alban’s, Mr. Hogarth the 
Painter (whom I have seen many a 
time smoking a pipe and making 
Caricatures of the Company at the 
Tavern he used — the Bedford Head, 
Maiden Lane, Covent Garden : a skil- 
ful Draughtsman, this Mr. Hogarth, 
but very Uppish and Impudent in his 
Tone ; for I remember that he once 
called me Captain Compound, seeing 
as the fellow said, that I was made 
up of three — Captain Bobadil, Cap- 
tain Macheatli, and Captain Kyd,)— 
this Mr. II. went down to St. Alban’s, 
and took a picture of the old Lord, 
as he sat in his great chair, counting 
the strength of the Scottish clans on 
his fingers. ’Twas afterwards graved 
on copper, and had a prodigious 
sale. 

Monday, March 9th, began this 
Lord’s Trial, very Grand and Stately, 
which took place in Westminster Hall, 
fitted up anew for the occasion, witli 
the Throne, and chairs for the Prince 
and the Duke, brave in Velvet and 
Gold, Scarlet benches for the Peers, 
galleries for Ladies and Foreign Am- 
bassadors, boxes for the Lawyers and 
the Managers of the House of Com- 
mons that preferred the Impeachment, 
and a great railed platform, that was 
half like a Scaffold itself, for the 
Prisoner. So we Warders, and a 
Strong Guard of Horse Grenadiers 
and Foot-Soldiers, brought him down 
from the Tower to Westminster, Mr. 
Fowler, the Gentleman Gaoler, at- 


144 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


tendin'? with the Axe : hut the Edge 
thereof turned away from his Lord- 
ship. The Crown Lawyers, Sir Wil- 
ani Yongc, Sir Dudley Rider, and 
Sir John Strange, that were of Coun- 
sel for the Crown, opened against 
him in a very hitter manner; at which 
the Old Sinner grinned, and likened 
them to hounds fighting for a very 
tough Morsel which was scarce worth 
the Tearing. Then he plagues the 
Lord Steward for permission for 
Counsel to he grauted to him to speak 
on his behalf, which by law could not 
be granted, and for a short-hand 
writer to take minutes, which, after 
some delay, was allowed. One Schield, 
that was the first Witness called, 
deposing that Lord Lovat made one 
of a company of gentlemen who in 
1740 drank healths and sang catches, 
such as u Confusion to the White 
Horse” (meaning the heraldic cog- 
nizance of Ilanover) u and all his 
generation,” and 

“ When Jemmy comes o’er, 

We shall have blood and blows 
galore,” 

my Lord cries out upon him as a False 
Villain and Perjured Rascal. And 
was thereupon admonished by the 
Lord Stewart to more decorous be- 
havior. Item : that he laid all the 
blame of the Frasers rising upon his 
Son, saying with Crocodile Tears 
that he was not the first who had an 
Undutiful Son ; whereupon the young 
gentleman cries out in natural Resent- 
ment that he would put the Saddle on 
the right Horse. But this and many 
other charges were brought home to 
him, and that he had long foregathered 
w ith the Pretender, of whom he spoke 
in a mock-tragedy style as “the young 
man Thomas Kuli Khan.” When 
upon his defence, he told many Lies, 
and strove to Butter their Lordships 
with specious Compliments and strain- 
ed Eulogies ; but ’twould not serve. 
The Lords being retired into their own 
chamber, and the question being put 
whether Simon Lord Lovat was guilty 
10 


of all the charges of high treason 
brought against him, every one, lay- 
ing his hand on his left breast, and 
beginning with the Junior Baron, an- 
swered, Guilty, upon my honor.” 
And the next day, which was the 
seventh of the Trial, he was solemnly 
sentenced to Die as a Traitor ; his 
Grace the Lord Steward making a 
most affecting Speech, in which he 
reproached the Lord at the Bar with 
having unnaturally endeavored to cast 
the blame of his malpractices on his 
son ; u which,” said his Grace, u if it 
be true, is an impiety that makes one 
tremble : for, to quote a wise author 
of antiquity, the love of our country 
includes all other social affections, 
which,” he continued, u shows a per- 
fect knowledge of human nature ; for 
we see, when that is gone, even the 
tenderest of all affections — the paren- 
tal — may be extinguished with it.” 
Upon which Admirable Discourse my 
fellow-Warder, Miles .Bandolier, fell 
a blubbering, and wiping his eyes with 
his laced sleeve, whimpers that it is 
something, after all, to be a Lord to 
be cast for Death in such Sweet Terms ; 
for no Judge at the Old Bailey would 
think of wasting Sugared w r ords upon 
the rogue he sent to Tyburn. Which 
is true. 

When all w r as done, and the Lord 
Steward had, by breaking his Staff, 
declared the commission void, the 
Prisoner, with a grimace twinkling 
about his wicked old mouth, bespoke 
his Majesty’s good consideration, and, 
turning to the Managers of the Com- 
mons, cries out, “ I hope, as ye are 
stout, ye will be merciful!” Upon 
which one Mr. Polwhedlyan, that sate 
for a Cornish borough, and was a very 
Fat Man, thinking himself directly 
concerned, shook his head with great 
gravity of countenance. But the old 
Villain was but Play-acting again, arid 
could but see that the Game was up ; 
for as the Lords were filing back to 
the House, he calls after them, u God 
bless you all ! I bid you an everlast- 
ing farewell, for in this place wc shall 
never meet again.” lie said u God 
145 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, 


* ' a 


bless you ! ” with a kind of fiendish 
yowl quite horrible to behold ; and if 
ever man’s benison sounded like a 
curse, it was that of bad old Lord 
Lovat. 

A very sad sight at this memorable 
Trial was the Appearance and De- 
meanour of J. Murray, of Broughton, 
Esq., that had been the Chevalier’s 
Secretary,— deepest of all in his Se- 
crets, and most loved and trusted by 
him. The unhappy man, to save his 
Life, had betrayed his master and 
turned King’s Evidence, not only 
against Lord Lovat, but many other 
unhappy Gentlemen. I never saw 
such a shrinking, cowering, hang-dog 
figure as was made by this Person in 
the Box; and burned with shame with- 
in myself to think that this should be 
a Man of Gentle birth, and that had 
touched the hand of a King’s Son, — 
Grandson, I mean. Accomplished 
scoundrel as Lovat was, even a deeper 
abhorrence was excited by this Judas : 
when he first stood up, the Lords, after 
gazing at him for a moment with con- 
tempt, turned their Backs upon him. 
The Crown Lawyers treated him in 
the manner that an Old-Bailey Coun- 
seller would cross-examine an ap- 
prover in a case of Larceny ; and as 
for the Prisoner, he just shut his eyes 
while Murray was giving evidence ; and 
when he had finished turns to the 
Gentleman Gaoler and asks, with his 
eyes still shut, u Is It gone ? ” mean- 
ing Judas. At which there was some 
merriment. 

’Twas just a month after this trial, 
OU April 9th, that Justice was done 
upon Simon Fraser, lie had cateu 
and drunk heartily, and cracked many 
scurril Jokes while under sentence, 
and seemed not to care T wopence 
whether he was Reprieved or Not. 
On tho fatal day he waked about three 
in the morning, and prayed, or pretend- 
ed to pray, with great Devotion. At 
all events, we Warders heard him ; 
and he made Noise enough. At five 
lie rose, and called for a glass of 
Wine-and-Water, after drinking which 
he Read till seven. Then he took 


- some more Wine-and-Water, and at 
eight desired that his Wig might be 
sent to the Barber to be combed out 
genteelly. Also, among some nick- 
nacks that he kept in a casket, he 
looked out a Purse made somewhat in 
the Scotch fashion, of sealskin, to 
hold the money which he desired to 
give to the Executioner. At half after 
nine he breakfasted very heartily of 
Minced Veal, which he hoped would 
not indigest, he facetiously remarked, 
ordering Chocolate and Coffee for his 
Friends, whose Health he drank him- 
self in Wine-and-Water. At eleven 
the Sheriffs sent to demand Ills Body, 
when lie desired all present, save we 
who were at the Door, to retire, that 
he might say a short prayer. Pres- 
ently he calls ’em again, saying, “ I 
am ready.” At the bottom of the 
first Pair of Stairs from his Chamber, 
General Williamson, the Command- 
ant of the Garrison, invited him into 
his room to rest himself. lie com- 
plied most cheerfully, and in French 
desired that he might be allowed to 
take leave of his Lady, and thank her 
for all the civilities — for she had sent 
him victuals every day from her own 
Table, dressed in the French fashion, 
which he much affected — which she 
had shown him during his confine- 
ment. But the Geucral told him, 
likewise in French, that she was too 
much afflicted by his Lordship’s Mis- 
fortunes to bear the shock of parting 
with him, and so begged to be ex- 
cused. Which means, that she did 
not care about being pawed and 
mauled by this wicked Old Satyr in 
his last moments ; though, with the 
curiosity natural to her Sex, I saw 
with my own eyes Madam William- 
son, in a new lloop and a grand silk 
Calash, and with half-a-dozen of her 
gossips, at a window of the House on 
lower Hill hard by the Sheriff’s, and 
overlooking the Scaffold. 

Now we Warders closed up about 
him ; and preceded and followed by 
Foot-Soldiers, he was conveyed in the 
Governor’s Coach to the Outward 
Gate, and so delivered over to the 
146 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


Sheriffs, who, giving a Receipt for his 
Body, conveyed him in another coach 
(hired fof^the two former Lords, Kil- 
marnock and Balmerino) to the said 
House close to the Scaffold, in which 
(the House) was a room lined with 
Black Cloth and hung with Sconces. 

A gentleman of a Pious Mien here 
beginning to read a Prayer for him, 
he bade me help him up that he might 
Kneel. One of the Sheriffs then asked 
him if he would take a Glass of 
Wine ; but he said that he would pre- 
fer Negus. But there was no warm 
water, unhappily, at hand, and says 
his Lordship, with liis old Grin, 
“ The warm bluid is nae tappit yet ; ” 
so they brought him a glass of burnt 
brandy-and-bitters, which he drank 
with great Gusto. 

He desired that all his Clothes 
should be given to his friends, together 
with his Corpse, remarking that for 
such end he would give the Execu- 
tioner Ten instead of Five guineas, 
which is the customary Compliment. 
To each of the dozen Warders there 
present he gave a Jacobus ; to Miles 
Bandolier fifty shillings ; and on my- 
self, who had specially attended on 
him ever since he was first brought to 
the Tower, he bestowed Five gold 
pieces. As I pouched the money, he 
clapped me*on the shoulder, and says 
in his comical way, 

“ I warrant, now, that beef and 
pudding would sit as easy under thy 
laced jerkin w T ere ‘ J. R.,’ and not 
4 G. R.,’ blazoned on thee, back and 
breast.” 

But anon a light cloud passed over 
his visage, and I heard him mutter to 
himself in the Scottish dialect, “ Beef 
and pudding! His cauld kail for Fraser 
the morn.” 

Then turning to the Sheriffs, he de- 
sired that his Head might be received 
in a Cloth and put into the Coffin, the 
which they promised him ; likewise 
that (if it could be done without cen- 
sure) the ceremony of holding up the 
Head at the Four Corners of the Scaf- 
fold should be dispensed with. His 
Lordship seemed now indeed very 


weak in his Body, albeit in no way 
disconcerted as to his Mind ; and, as 
Miles Bandolier and your Humble 
Servant escorted him up the steps of 
the Scaffold, he looked around, and 
gazing upon the immense concourse 
of people, 

“God save us!” says he; “why 
should there be such a bustle about 
taking off ane gray head, that cannot 
get up Three Steps without Three 
Bodies to support it ? ” 

From which it will be seen that his 
Lordship had a Merry Humor unto 
the last. 

No sooner was he on the fatal Plat- 
form than, seeing me (as he con- 
descended to think) much dejected, he 
claps me on the shoulder again, say- 
ing, “ Cheer up thy heart, laddie in 
scarlet. I am not afraid ; why should 
you ? ” 

Then he asks for the Executioner, 
— that was none other, indeed, than 
Jack Ketch, the Common Hangman, 
dressed up in black, with a Mask on, 
for the days of Gentlemen Headsmen 
have long since passed away ; though 
some would have it that this was a 
Surgeon’s Apprentice, that dwelt close 
to their Hall in the Old Bailey, and 
turned Executioner for a Frolic ; but 
I am sure it was Ketch, for he came 
afterwards to the Stone Kitchen, 
wanting to treat all present to Drink ; 
but the meanest Grenadier there 
would have none of the Hangman’s 
liquor, for all that the Blood on his 
jerkin was that of a Lord ; and the 
fellow grew so impertinent at last that 
we Warders were constrained to turn 
him out of the Fortress, and for- 
bid him to return under pain of a 
Drubbing. “ I shall see you no more 
in the Tower,” quoth the impudent 

rascal ; “ but, by , you shall all 

of you meet me at Tyburn some day, 
and I’ll sell your laced doublets in 
Rosemary Lane after that your throt- 
tles are twisted.” But to resume. 
Lord Lovat gave this murderous 
wretch with the Axe Ten Guineas in 
a Purse. Then he felt the edge of 
the Instrument itself, and said very 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


quietly that he u thought it would do.” 
Soon after, lie rose from an Armchair 
which had been placed for him, .and 
walks round and round his Coffin, 
which was covered with Black Vel- 
vet, studded with Silver Nails, and 
this Inscription on it (the which I 
copied off on ray Tablets at the 
time) : 

Simon Dominus Fraser de Lovat, 
Decollat. April 9, 1747. 

JEtat. suae 80. 

Then he sat down again, and recited 
some Latin words which I did not 
understand, but was afterwards told 
they were from Horace, and signified 
that it is a sweet and proper thing to 
Die for one’s Country; at the which 
a Wag in one of the Gazettes of the 
time must needs turn this decorous 
Sentiment into Ridicule, and compose 
an Epigram insulting Misfortune, to 
this Effect: 

“ With justice may Lovat this adage 
apply, 

For the good of their country All 
criminals die.” 

Then did the unfortunate Nobleman 
desire all the people to stand off ex- 
cept his two Warders, who again sup- 
ported him while he prayed ; after 
which he calls up his Solicitor and 
Agent in Scotland, Mr. Wm. Fraser, 
and, presenting his Gold-headed Cane 
to him, said, “ I deliver you this cane 
in token of my sense of your faithful 
services, and of my committing to you 
all the power I have upon earth ; ” 
which is a Scotch fashion, I believe, 
when they are Executed. And with 
this he kissed him upon both cheeks ; 
for this Lord was much given to hug- 
ging and slobbering. 

He also calls for Mr. James Fra- 
ser, likewise a kinsman (and these 
Northern Lords seem to have them by 
Hundreds), and says, “My dear 
Jamie, I’m gaun ta Haiv’n ; but ye 
must e’en crawl a wee langer in this 


evil Warld.” And with this, the old 
Grin. 

Then he took off his Hat,, Wig, and 
Upper Clothes, and delivered them to 
Mr. W. F., charging him to see tha 
the Executioner did not touch their . 
He ordered his Nightcap to be put on, 
and, unloosing his Neckcloth and the 
Collar of his Shirt, he kneeled down 
at the Block, and pulled the Cloth 
which was to receive his Head close 
to him ; but he being too near that 
fatal Billet, the Executioner desired 
him to remove a little further Back, 
which, 'with our assistance, was Im- 
mediately done ; and his Neck being 
properly placed, he told the Headsman 
lie would say a short Prayer, and then 
give the Signal by dropping his Hand- 
kerchief. In this posture he remained 
about Half a Minute. Then, throw- 
ing down the Kerchief, the Execu- 
tioner, at One Blow, severed his 
Head from his Body. Then was a 
dreadful Crimson Shower of Gore all 
around ; and many and many a time 
at the Playhouse have I thought upon 
that Crimson Cascade on Tower Hill, 
when, in the tragedy of Macbeth , the 
wicked Queen talks of “ the old man 
having so much blood in him.” 

The Corpse was put into the Coffin, 
and so into the Hearse, and was car- 
ried back to the Tower. At four 
o’clock came an Undertaker from 
Holborn Hill, very fine, with many 
mourning coaches full of Scots gentle- 
men, and fetched away the Body, in 
order to be sent to Scotland, and 
deposited in his own Tomb at Kirk- 
hill. But leave not being given by 
Authority as was expected, it was 
again brought back to the Tower, and 
buried by the side of Kilmarnock and 
Balmerino, close to the Communion- 
rails in the little church of St. Pefer- 
on-the-Green, where so much Royal 
and Noble Dust doth moulder away. 

Memorandum . — The Block on which 
this Nobleman suffered was but a 
common Billet of Oak wood, such as 
Butchers use, and hollowed out for the 
purpose of accommodating the neck ; 


148 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


but it bad not been stowed away in 
the White Tower for a month before 
it was shown to the Public for Money, 
and passed as the Block whereon 
Queen Anne Boleyn was beheaded. 
So with the Axe, which was declared 
to be the one used in decapitating 
K. C. 1 st ; but there’s not a word of 
truth in the whole story. The Block 
was hewn and the Axe was forged 
after the ’45, and specially for the 
doing of justice on the Rebel Lords. 

Note also that Lord Lovat left it in 
a Codicil to his Will that all the Pipers 
from Jonic Groat’s house to Edin- 
burgh were to play before his Corpse, 
and have a handsome allowance in 
Meal and Whisky (on which this sort 
of People mostly live) for so doing. 
Likewise that all the good old Women 
of his county were to sing what they 
call a Coronach over him. And in- 
deed Women, both young and old, are 
so good when there’s anything pitiful 
to be done, that I make no doubt that 
the Coronach would have been sung if 
the old Rebel had gone back to Scot- 
land ; and if there were found those 
to weep for Nero, I see no reason why 
some tears should not have been shed 
for Simon, Lord Lovat. 

But there is no denying, after all, 
that Simon Fraser was a very com- 
plete Scoundrel. His whole life, in- 
deed, had been but one series of 
Crimes, one calendar of Frauds, one 
tissue of Lies. For at least seventy 
out of his eighty years of life he had 
been cheating, cogging, betraying, and 
doing the Devil’s service upon earth ; 
and who shall say that his end was 
undeserved ? A Scots Lord of his 
acquaintance was heard to say that he 
deserved to be hung twenty times in 
twenty places for twenty heinous 
Crimes that he had committed ; and 
let this be borne in mind, that this was 
the same Lord Lovat that, as Captain 
Fraser, and being then a Young Man, 
was outlawed for a very atrocious Act 
of Violence that he committed upon a 
young lady of Fashion and Figure, 
whom he carried away (with the aid 
of a Band of his brutal Retainers) in 


the dead of night, married by Force, 
with the assistance of a hireling Priest 
of his, cutting the very clothes ofF her 
body with his Dirk, and bidding his 
Pipers strike up to drown her cries. 
And yet such a Ruffian as he undoubt- 
edly was could maintain an appearance 
of a facete disposition to the last; and 
he seems to have taken great pains to 
quit the Stage, not only with Decency, 
but with that Dignity which 1*3 thought 
to distinguish the Good Conscience 
and the Noble Mind. There is only 
one more thing to be set down, and 
that is one that I, being the Warder 
who (with Bandolier) attended him 
throughout his confinement, can vouch 
for the truth of. It was falsely said 
at the time that this Lord sought to 
defraud the Axe by much drinking of 
Wine : now I can aver that while in 
custody he never drank above two 
pints a day ; and the report may have 
arisen from the considerable quantities 
of Brandy and Rum which were used, 
night and nfbrning, to bathe his poor 
feet and legs. 

Now, Tranquillity being happily 
restored to these Kingdoms, and the 
Chevalier safely gotten away to France 
(whither, however, that luckless young 
Man was expelled, and in a very ig- 
nominious manner, at the Peace of 
Aix-la-Chapelle) , I do confess that I 
began to weary somewhat of my line 
Red Doublet, and of the Rosettes in 
my shoes ; and although my Loyalty 
to King George and the Protestant 
Succession was without stain, I felt 
that it was somewhat beneath the 
dignity of a Gentleman Cavalier to 
dangle all day beneath a Portcullis 
with a Partisan on one’s shoulder, or 
act as Bear Leader to the Joskins and 
simpering City Madams that came to 
see the Curiosities. And I felt my 
old roaming Fit come upon me as 
fierce as ever, aud longed to be off to 
Foreign Parts again. I could have 
taken service under the Duke of Cum- 
berland in the Avars of Germany, and 
could have procured, perhaps, a pair 
of Colors in his Royal Highness’s 
army ; but, odd to relate, ever since 


149 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


my Misadventure at Vienna, wliat 
time I was in little Squire Pinchin’s 
service, I had conceived a great Dis- 
taste for those High Dutch countries, 
and cared not to go a campaigning 
there. Then there was fighting going 
on, and to spare, in Italy, where the 
Austrians were doing their best to 
reduce Genoa, the French opposing 
'em tooth and nail. But I misliked 
the Germans as well as their country, 
and saw not the Profit of getting shot 
under the command of an Austrian 
Archduke. There were many other 
Continental countries open to the en- 
terprise of Gentlemen Adventurers 
from England, but in most of them 
only Papists would go down ; and to 
turn ltomanist, for whatever reward 
of Place or Diguity, was against my 
principles. 

Pending, however, my coming to 
some Determination as to my future 
mode of life, I resolved to throw up 
my Post of tower Warder, receiving 
the gratuity of Twenty Guineas which 
was granted to those resigning by the 
bounty of his Majesty the King. 
Those who state that I left my Em- 
ployment in any thing like Disgrace 
are surely the vilest Traducers and 
Libellers that ever deserved to have 
their tongues bored through with a 
Red-hot Iron ; but I do not mind my- 
self admitting that my situation had 
become somewhat unpleasant, and 
that I was sufficiently anxious to 
change the scene of my Adventures. 
There was a certain Waiting-maid be- 
longing to Madam Williamson (that 
was General Williamson’s lady, Mili- 
tary Commandant) who had long cast 
Sheep’s Eyes upon me. I declare 
that I gave the Lass no encourage- 
ment ; but what would you have ? I 
was in the prime of life, and she a 
buxom kind of Wench, about twenty- 
two years of age. ’Tvvas following 
me here, and ogling me there, and 
leaving love-billets and messages for 
me at the Guard-Room. I will not 
deny but that from time to time I may 
have passed a jest with the girl, nay, 
given her some few trinkums, and 


now and then treated her to chocolate 
or sweet wine at Marylebone Gardens 
or the Flask at Hampstead. You 
may be sure that on these occasions I 
did not wear my Antiquated costume 
as a Tower Warder, but a blue Cullo- 
den frock, gold-corded, and with crown 
buttons ;. a scarlet waistcoat and 
breeches ; a hat with a military cock ; 
and a neat hanger by my side. By 
drawers, masters of the games, and 
others, I was now always known as 
Captain. 

Had I not been exceedingly wary 
and circumspect in all my dealings 
with this Wailing-Woman, — poor 
thing ! her name was Prue, — the affair 
might have ended badly; and there 
might have been Rendezvous on the 
ramparts, moonlight trysts on the 
Tower Green, and the like Follies. 
But I saw that our Flirtation must 
not be permitted to go any further. 
The Commandant’s wife, indeed, had 
come to hear of it ; and sending for 
me to her Parlor, must needs ask me 
what my intentions were towards her 
Maid. Madam,” I answered, tak- 
ing off my hat, and making her a very 
low bow, u I am a soldier ; and I 
never knew a soldier yet that Intended 
anything ; all he does is without any 
Intention at all.” Upon which she 
bade me to go for an Impudent fellow ; 
and I doubt not, had I been under her 
Husband’s orders, would have had me 
set upon the Picket on the Parade for 
my free speaking; but we Tower 
Warders were not amenable to such 
Slavish Discipline ; and, indeed Gen- 
eral Williamson, who stood by, was 
pleased to laugh heartily at my answer, 
and gave me a crown to drink the 
King’s health, bidding me, however, 
take care what I was about, and see 
that the poor girl came to no Hurt. 
And I being at that time somewhat 
chary of imperilling my Indepen- 
dence, and minded to take neither a 
Wife nor a Mistress, thought the very 
best thing I could do was to kiss, 
shake hands, and Part, lest worse 
should come of it. 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


Chapter tiie Eighteenth. 
i see much of the inside of tiie 

WORLD, AND THEN GO RIGHT ROUND 

IT. 

1748. I was not yet Forty year 3 
of age. Hale and Stout, Comely 
enough, — so said Mistress Prne and 
many other damsels, — with a' Military 
Education, an approved reputation for 
Valor, and very little else besides. A 
gentleman at large, with a purse well- 
nigh as slender as an ell-wand, and as 
woebegone as a dried eel-skin. But 
I was never one that wanted many 
Superfluities ; and having no Friends 
in the world, was of a most Contented 
Disposition. 

Some trouble, indeed, must I have 
with that luckless Mistress Prue, 
the Waiting-Maid — sure, I did the 
girl no Harm, beyond whispering a 
little soft nonsense in her ear now and 
then. But she must needs have a 
succession of Hysterical Fits after my 
departure from the Tower, and write 
me many scores of Letters couched in 
the most Lamentable Rigmarole, 
threatening to throw herself into Rosa- 
mond’s Pond in St. James’s Park 
(then a favorite Drowning-Place for 
Disconsolate Lovers), with many 
other nonsensical Menaces. But I 
was firm to my Determination to do 
her no harm, and therefore carefully 
abstained from answering any of her 
letters. She did not break her heart ; 
but (being resolved to Aved one that 
wore the King’s cloth) she married 
Miles Bandolier about three months 
after my Departure, and broke his 
head, ere the Honeymoon was over, 
with a Bed-staff. A most frivolous 
Quean this, and I well rid of her. 

Coming out of the Tower, I took 
lodgings for a season in Great Ryder 
Street, &t. James’s, and set up 
for a Person of Pleasure. There 
were many Military Officers of my 
acquaintance who honored me- with 
their company over a Bottle, for even 
as a Tower Warder I had been a kind 
of a Gentleman, and there was no 

U 


treating me as one of base Degree. 
They laughed somewhat at my Brevet 
rank of Captain, and sometimes twit- 
ted me as to what Regiment I was in ; 
but I let them laugh, so long as they 
did not go too far, when I would most 
assuredly have shown them, by the 
length of my Blade, not only what 
Regiment I belonged to, but what 
Mettle I was of. By favor of some 
of my Martial Friends, I was intro- 
duced to a favorite Coffee-House, the 
u Ramifies,” in Jermyn Street (’tis 
Slaughter’s, in St. Martin’s Lane, now, 
that the Soldier-Officers do mo t 
use) ; and there we had many a pleas- 
ant Carouse, and, moreover, many a 
good game at cards ; at the which, 
thanks to the tuition of Mr. Hodge, 
when I was in Mr. Pinchin’s service, 
I was a passable adept, being able to 
hold my own and More, in almost 
every Game that is to be found 
in Hoyle. And so our card-playing 
did result, not only to mutual pleas- 
ure, but to my especial Profit ; for I 
was very lucky. But I declare that I 
always played fair ; and if any man 
doubted the strict probity of my pro- 
ceeding, there was then, as there is 
now, my Sword to vindicate my 
Honor. 

’Tis ill-living, how r cver, on Gam- 
bling. Somehow or another the 
Money you win at Cards — I would 
never touch Dice, which are too chan- 
cy, liable to be Sophisticated, and, be- 
sides, sure to lead to Brawling, Stab- 
bing, and cracking of Crowns — this 
Money, gotten over Old Nick’s back, 
I say, never seems to do a Man any 
Good. ’Tis fight come, and fight go ; 
and the Store of Gold Pieces that glit- 
ter so bravely when you sweep them 
off the green cloth seems, in a couple 
of days afterwards, to have turned to 
dry leaves, like the Magician’s in the 
Fairy Tale. Excepting Major Pan- 
ton, who built the Street and the 
Square which bear his name out of 
One Night’s Profit at the Pharoah 
table, can you tell me of one habitual 
Gambler who has been able to realize 
any thing substantial out of his Wiu- 
1 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


nings ? No, no ; a Hand at Cards is 
all very well, and ’tis pleasant to win 
enough to pay one’s Reckoning, give a 
Supper to the Loser, and have a Frisk 
upon Town afterwards ; but I do ab- 
hor your steady, systematic Gamblers, 
with their restless eyes, quivering lips, 
hair bristling under their wigs, and 
twitching fingers, as they watch the 
Game. Of course, when Cards are 
played, you must play for Money. 
As to playing for Love, I would as 
soon play for nutshells or cheese-par- 
ings. But the whole business is too 
feverish and exciting for a Man of 
warm temperament. ’Tis killing work 
when your Bed and Raiment, your 
Dinner and your Flask, depend on the 
turn up of a card. And so I very 
speedily abandoned this line of life. 

’T was necessary, nevertheless, for 
something to be done to bring Grist to 
the Mill. About this time it was a 
very common practice for Great 
Noblemen — notably those who were 
in any way addicted to pleasure, and 
ours was a mighty Gay Nobility thirty 
or forty years since — to entertain Men 
of Honor, Daring, and Ability, cun- 
ning in the use of their Swords, and 
exceedingly discreet in their conver- 
sations, to attend them upon their pri- 
vate affairs, and render to them Ser- 
vices of a kind that required Secrecy 
as well as Courage. One or two 
Duels in Hyde Park and behind Mon- 
tagu House, in which I had the honor 
to be concerned as Second, — and in 
one of which I engaged the Second of 
my Patron’s Adversary, and succeed- 
ed, by two dexterous side slices, in 
Quincing his face as neatly as a house- 
wife would Slice Fruit for a Devon- 
shire Squab Pie, — gained me the no- 
tice of some of the Highest Nobility, 
to whom I was otherwise recom- 
mended by the easiness of my Man- 
ners, and the amenity of my Language. 
The young Karl of Modesley did in 
particular affect me, and I was of Ser- 
vice to his Lordship on many most 
momentous and delicate Occasions. 
For upwards of Six Months I was 
•sumptuously entertained in liis Lord- 


ship’s Mansion in Red Lion Square ; 
x-a Kind of Hospitality, indeed, which 
he was most profuse in the dispensa- 
tion of : — there being at the same time 
in the House a French Dancing-Mas- 
ter, an Italian Singer, a Newmarket 
Horse-Jockey, and a Domestic Chap- 
lain, that had been unfrocked for too 
much fighting of Cocks and drinking 
of Cider with clowns at his Vicarage ; 
but to whom the Earl of Modesley 
was always a fast friend. Unfor- 
tuuate Young Nobleman ! He died 
of a malignant Fever at Avignon, just 
before attaining his Thirtieth Year ! 
His intentions towards me were of 
the most Bounteous Description ; and 
he even, being pleased to say that I 
was a good-looking Fellow enough, 
and come to an Age when it behoved 
me to be settled in Life, proposed that 
I should enter in the bonds of Wed- 
lock with one Miss Jenny Lightfoot, 
that had formerly been a Milliner in 
Liquorpond Street, but who, when his 
Lordship introduced me to her, lived 
in most splendid Lodgings under the 
Piazza, Covent Garden, and gave the 
handsomest Chocolate Parties to the 
Young Nobility that ever were seen. 
So Boundless was his Lordship’s 
geuerosity that he offered to bestow a 
portion of Five Hundred Pounds on 
Miss Lightfoot if she would become 
Madam Daugerous — said portion to 
be at my absolute disposal — and to 
give me besides a long Lease at a Pep- 
percorn Rent of a Farm of his in 
Wiltshire. The Match, however, 
came to nothing. I was not yet dis- 
posed to surrender my Liberty; and, 
indeed, the Behavior of Miss Light- 
foot, while the Treaty of Alliance be- 
tween us was being discussed, did not 
augur very favorably for our felicity 
in the Matrimonial State. Indeed, 
she was pleased to call me Rogue, 
Gambler, Bully, Led Captain, and 
many other uncivil names. She snap- 
ped off the silver hilt of my dress- 
sword (presented to me after I had 
fought the Second in Hyde Park), and 
obstinately refused to restore that 
gewgaw to me, telling me that she had 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


given it to her Landlady (one Mother 
Bishopsbib, a monstrous Fat Woman, 
that was afterwards Carted, and stood 
i the Pillory in Spring Gardens, for 
evil practices) in part payment for 
rent owing. Moreover, she wilfully 
spoilt my best periwig by overturning 
a Chocolate Mill thereupon ; and other- 
wise so miscouducted herself that I 
bade her a respectful Farewell, — she 
leaving the marks of her Nails on my 
face as a parting Gift, — and told my 
Lord Modesley that I would as lief 
wed a Roaring Dragon as this Ter- 
magant of the Piazza. This Refusal 
brought about a Rupture between my- 
self and my Lord, lie was impru- 
dent enough to talk about my Ingrati- 
tude, to tell me that the very coat on 
my back was bought and paid for with 
Lis Mouey, and to threaten to have me 
kicked out of doors by two of his Tall 
Lacqueys. But I, speedily let him 
have a piece of my Mind. “ My 
Lord,” says I, going up to him, and 
thrusting my face full in his, “ you 
will be pleased to know that I am a 
Gentleman, whose ancestors were en- 
nobled centuries before your rascally 
grandfather got his peerage for turn- 
ing against the true King.” 

lie began to murmur something (as 
many have done before when my 
blood was up, and I have mentioned 
Royalty) about my being “ a Jacob- 
ite.” 

“ I’ll Jacobite your jacket for you, 
you Jackadandy ! ” I retorted. u You 
have most foully insulted me. I know 
your Lordship’s ways well. If I sent 
you a cartel, you and your whipper- 
snapper Friends would sneer at it, be- 
cause I am poor, and fling Led Cap- 
tain in my teeth. You won’t fight 
with a poor Gentleman of the Sword. 
I am too much of a Man of Honor to 
waylay you at night, and give you the 
private Stab, as you deserve ; but so 
sure as you are your father’s sou, if 
you don’t make me this instant a 
Handsome Apology, I will cudgel you 
till there is not a whole bone in your 
body.” 

The young Ruffian — he was not 


such a coward as Squire Pinchin, but 
rather murderous — makes no more 
do, but draws upon me. 1 caught up 
a quarter-staff that lay handy (for we 
were always exercising ourselves at 
athletic amusements), struck the wea- 
pon from his grasp, and hit him a 
sounding thwack across the shins that 
brought him down upon lii3 marrow- 
bones. 

“ Below the Belt ! ” he cries out, 
holding up his hands. u Foul ! foul ! ” 
Foul be hanged ! ” I answered. 
“ I’m not going to fight, but to Beat 
You ; ” and I rushed upon him, short- 
ening the Staff, and would have bela- 
bored him Soundly, but that he saw 
it was no use contending against John 
Dangerous, and very humbly craved 
a parley. He Apologized as I had 
Demanded, and lent me Twenty Guin- 
eas, and we parted on the most friendly 
terms. 

This Lord essayed, notwithstanding, 
to do me much harm in Town, saying 
that I had used him with black Cru- 
elty, had requited his many favors 
with gross Treachery, and the like 
Falsehoods, until I was obliged to 
send him a Message to this purport : 
that unless he desisted, I should be 
obliged to keep my promise as to the 
Cudgel. Upon which he presently 
surceased. So much meanness had 
lie, even, as to fudge up a pretended 
debt of nineteen guineas against me 
as for money lent, for the which I was 
arrested by bailiffs and conveyed — 
being taken at Jonathan’s — to a vile 
spunging-house in Little Bell Alley, 
Moorfields ; but the keeper of the 
House stood my friend, and procured 
a Bail for me in the shape of an Hon- 
est Gentleman, who was to be seen 
every day about Westminster Hall 
with a straw in his shoe, and for a 
crown and a dinner at the eating- 
house would suddenly become worth 
five hundred a year, or at least swear 
himself black in the face that such 
was his estate : — which was all that 
was required. And when it came to 
justifying of Bail before the Judges, 
what so easy as to hire a suit of clothes 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


in Monmouth Street, and send him 
into court fully equipped as a reputa- 
ble gentleman ? However, there was 
no occasion for this, for on the very 
night of my enlargement I won fifty 
guineas at the tables ; and walking 
very Bold to my Lord’s House, sends 
up the nineteen guineas to my Lord 
with a note, asking to what lawyer I 
should pay the cost of suit, and 
whether I should wait upon him at 
his Levee for a receipt. On the 
which he, still with the fear of a 
cudgelling before his eyes, sends me 
down a Receipt in Full, and the Money 
bach to boot , begging me to trouble 
myself in no way about the lawyer ; 
which, I promise )0u, I did not. 
And so an end of this troublesome 
acquaintance, — a profitable one enough 
to me while it lasted. As for Miss 
Jenny, her Behavior soon became as 
light as her name. I have heard that 
she got into trouble about a Spanish 
Merchant that was flung down stairs 
and nigh killed, aud that but for the 
Favor of Justice Cogwell, who had a 
hankering for her, ’twould have been 
a Court-Job. Afterwards I learnt 
that she had been seen beating Hemp 
in Bridewell in a satin sack laced with 
silver ; and I warrant that she was 
fain to cry, “ Knock ! oh, good Sir 
Robert, knock ! ” many a time before 
the Blue-coated Beadles on Evil 
Thursday had done swingeing of her. 

There are certain periods in the life 
even of the most fortunate man when 
his Luck is at a desperately low ebb, 
— when everything seems to go amiss 
with him, — when nothing that he can 
turn his hand to prospers, — when 
friends desert him, and the compan- 
ions of his sunshiny days chide him 
for not having made better use of his 
opportunities, — when, Do what he will, 
he cannot avert the Black Storm, — 
when Ruin seems impending, and 
Catastrophe is on the cards, — -when 
he is Down, in a word, and the de- 
spiteful are getting ready to gibe at 
him in his Misfortune, and to admin- 
ister unto him the last Kick. These 
times of Trial and Bitter Travail 

lo 


ofttimes strike one who has just at- 
tained Middle age, — the Halfway- 
House of Life ; and then, ’tis the 
merest chance in the world whether 
he will be enabled to pick himself up 
again, or be condemned for evermore 
to poverty and contumely, — to the 
portion of weeds and outworn faces. 
I do confess that about this period of 
my career things went very badly 
with me, and that I was grievously 
hard-driven, not alone to make both 
cuds meet, but to discover anything 
that could have its ending in a Meal 
of Victuals. I have heard that some 
of the greatest Prelates, Statesmen, 
Painters, Captains, and Merchants — 
I speak not of Poets, for it is their 
eternal portion, seemingly, to be born, 
to live, and to Die Poor — have suf- 
fered the like straits at some time or 
another of their lives. Many times, 
however, have I put it on record in 
these pages, that Despair and I were 
never Bedfellows. As for Suicide, I 
do condemn it, and abhor it utterly, 
as the most cowardly, Dishonest, and 
unworthy Method to which a Man 
can resort that he may rid himself of 
his Difficulties. To make a loath- 
some unhandsome corpse of yourself, 
and deny yourself Christian Burial, 
nay, run the risk of crowner’s quest, 
and interment at the meeting of four 
cross-roads with a Stake driven through 
your Heart. Oh, ’tis shameful ! Ilaug 
yourself, forsooth ! why should you 
spend money in threepenny cord, when 
Jack Ketch, if you deserve it, will 
hang you for nothing, and the County 
find the Rope ? Take poison ! why, 
you arc squeamish at accepting physic 
from the doctor, which may possibly 
do you good. Why, then, should you 
swallow a vile mess which you are 
ceHain must do you harm ? Fall 
upon your sword as Tully — I mean 
Brutus — or some of those old Romans, 
were wont to do when the Game was 
up ! In the first place, I should like 
to see the man, howsoever expert a 
fencer, who could so tumble on his 
own blade and kill himself. ’Tis 
easier to swallow a sword than to fall 
1 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


upon one, and the first is quite as much 
a Mountebank’s Trick as t’other. 
Blow your brains out! A mighty 
fine climax truly, to make a Horrible 
Mess all over the floor, and frighten 
the neighbors out of their wits, be- 
sides, as a waggish friend of mine has 
it, rendering yourself stone-deaf for 
life. If it comes to powder and ball, 
why, a Man of courage would much 
sooner blow out somebody else’s Brains 
instead of his own. 

I did not, I am thankful to say, want 
bread during this my time of ill luck ; 
and I never parted with my sword ; 
but sure it is that Jack Dangerous 
was woundily pushed, and had to 
adopt many extraordinary shifts for a 
livelihood. Item : I engaged myself 
to one Mr. Macanasser, an Irishman, 
that had been a pupil of the famous 
Mr. Figg, Master of the Noble Art 
of Self-Defence, at his Theatre of 
Arms, on the right hand side of the 
Oxford Road, near Adam and Eve 
Court. Mr. Figg was, as is well 
known, the very Atlas of the sword ; 
and Mr. Macanasser’s body was a very 
mass of scars and cicatrices gotten in 
hand-to-hand conflicts with the broad- 
sword on the public stage. He had 
once presumed to rival Mr. Figg, 
whence* arose a cant saying of the 
time, “A fig for the Irish but hav- 
ing been honorably vanquished by him, 
even to the slicing of his nose in two 
pieces, the cracking of his crown in 
sundry places, and the scoring of his 
body as though it had been a loin of 
pork for the bakehouse, he was taken 
into his service, and became a princi- 
pal figure in all the grand gladiatorial 
encounters,' at wages of forty shillings 
a w r eek and his meat. As for Mr. 
Figg himself, who was as good at 
backsword as at broadsword, at quar- 
ter-staff as at foil, and at fisticuffs as 
any one of them — to say nothing of 
his Cornish wrestling — I saw him once, 
and shall never forget him. There 
was a majesty blazed in his counten- 
ance and shone in all his actions be- 
yond all I ever beheld. His right leg 
bold and firm ; and his Left, which 


could hardly ever be disturbed, gave 
him the surprising advantages he so 
often proved, and struck his Advers- 
ary with Despair and Panic. He had 
that peculiar way of stepping in, in a 
Parry, which belongs to the Grand 
School alone ; he knew his arm, and 
its just time of moving ; put a firm 
faith in that, and never let his foe es- 
cape a parry. He was just as much 
as great a master as any I ever saw, 
as he was a greater judge of time and 
Measure. It was his method, when 
he fought in his Amphitheatre, to send 
round to a select number of his schol- 
ars to borrow a shirt for the ensuing 
combat, and seldom failed of half-a- 
dozen of superfine Holland from his 
prime Pupils. Most of the young No- 
bility and Gentry made it a part of 
their education to march under his 
warlike banner. Most of his Schol- 
ars were at every battle, and were 
sure to exult at their great master’s 
victories ; every person supposing he 
saw the wounds his shirt received. 
Then Mr. Figg would take an oppor- 
tunity to inform his Lenders of the 
charm their Linen had received, with 
an offer to send the garments home ; 
but he seldom received any other an- 
swer than “ Hang you, keep it.” A 
most ingenious and courageous Per- 
son, and immeasurably beyond all his 
competitors, such as Macanasser, Will 
Holmes, Felix Maguire, Broughton, 
Sutton, and the like. 

Many good bouts with all kinds of 
weapons did we have at Mr. Macan- 
asser’s theatre, which was down a 
Stable-yard behind Newport Market, 
not far from Orator Henley’s chapel. 
The shirt manoeuvre we tried over 
and over again with varying success ; 
but we found it in the end impossible 
to preserve order among our Patrons, 
the greater part of whom were Butch- 
ers ; and I am fain to admit that many 
of these unctuous sky-blue jerkins 
could fight as well as we. Then Mr. 
Macanasser was much given to drink- 
ing, and in his potations quarrelsome. 
’Twas all very well fighting on a stage 
for profit, and with the chance of ap- 


155 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


plause, a clean shirt, and perchance a 
Right Good Supper given to us by our 
admirers afterwards at some neigh- 
boring tavern ; but I never could see 
the humor of Swashbuckling for no- 
thing, and without occasion ; and as 
my Employer was somewhat too 
prompt to call in cold iron when his 
Head was so Hot, I shook hands with 
him, and bade him find another assist- 
ant. This was the Mr. Macanasser 
that was afterwards so unfortunate as 
to be hanged at Tyburn for devalising 
a gentleman at Roehampton. Great 
interest was made to save him, his 
very prosecutor (who knew not at the 
first his assailant, or that he had been 
driven to the road by hard times) head- 
ing the signatures to a petition for him. 
But ’twas all in vain. He made a 
beautiful end of it in a fine white night- 
cap fringed ; and his funeral was at- 
tended by some of the most eminent 
swordsmen in town, who had a gallant 
set-to afterwards for the benefit of his 
widow. ’Tis sad to think of the num- 
bers of brave men that I have known, 
and how many of them are Hanged. 

About this time I was much with 
the Players, but misliked them exceed- 
ingly ; and although numbers of bril- 
liant offers were made to me, I could 
not be persuaded to try the sock and 
buskin. Hard as were the names by 
which my enemies would sometimes 
call me, I could never abide that of 
Rogue and Vagabond, and such, by 
Act of Parliament, was the player at 
that time. No, I said, whatever straits 
I am driven to, I will be a Soldier of 
Fortune, and Captain Dangerous to 
the last. 

Of my adventure with Madam Taf- 
fetas the Widow, I am not disposed 
to say much. Indeed, until my being 
finally settled, and made the Happiest 
Man upon Earth by my union with 
the departed Saint who was the mo- 
ther of my Lilias, it must be admit- 
ted that my commerce with the Sex 
was mostly of the unluckiest descrip- 
tion. I have been used most shame- 
fully by women ; but it behoves me 
not to complain, seeing how much fe- 


licity I was permitted to enjoy in my 
latter days. This much, however, I 
will discreetly set down. That meet- 
ing Madam Taffetas in a side box at 
Drury Lane playhouse, She was pleas- 
ed to accept my Addresses, and to ip » 
form me that my conversation was in 
the highest degree tasteful to her. I 
entertained her very handsomely — in- 
deed much beyond my means, for I 
was very heavily in debt for necessa- 
ries, and I could scarcely walk the 
streets without apprehensions of the 
grim Sergeant with his capias. Mad- 
am Taffetas was an exceedingly comely 
person, amazingly well dressed, and, 
as I was given to understand, in very 
prosperous circumstances. She kept 
an Italian Warehouse by the Sign of 
the two Olive Posts, in the broad part 
of the Strand, almost opposite to Ex- 
eter Change, and sold all sorts of 
Italian Silks, Lustrings, Satins, Pad- 
uasoys, Velvets, Damasks, Fans, Leg- 
horn Hats, Flowers, Violin Strings, 
Books of Essences, Venice Treacle, 
Balsams, Florence Cordials, Oil, Ol- 
ives, Anchovies, Capers, Vermicelli, 
Bologna Saussages, Parmesan Cheese, 
Naples Soap, and similar delicate cates 
from foreign parts. All her friends 
put her down as a forty-thousand- 
pounder. In Brief, she professed to 
be satisfied with my gentility and An- 
cient Lineage, though worldly goods I 
had none to offer her. All congratu- 
lated me on my Good Fortune ; and 
not wanting to make any unnecessary 
bustle about the affair, we took coach 
one fine Monday morning down to 
Fleet Market, and were married by a 
Fleet parson — none other, indeed, 
than my old Friend Chaplain Hodge, 
who had taken to this way of life and 
found it very profitable, marrying his 
twenty or thirty couple a week, when 
business was brisk, at fees varying 
from five guineas to seven-and-six- 
pence, and from a dozen of Burgundy 
to half a pint of Geneva. But ’twas 
a rascally business, the venerable man 
said, and he sorely longed for the good 
old days when lie and I, and Squire 
Pinchin, made the Grand Tour toge- 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


thcr. Alas, for that poor little man : 
His Reverence told me that he had 
gone from bad to worse ; that his Mam- 
ma had married a knavish lawyer, 
who so bewildered Mr. Pinchin with 
Mortgages, and Deeds of Gift, and 
Loans at usurious interest, that he got 
at last the whole of his property from 
him, brought him in many thousands 
in debt besides, and after keeping him 
for three years locked up and half 
starved in the Compter, was only 
forced to consent to his enlargement 
when the unhappy little man — whose 
head was never of the strongest, and 
his wits always going a wool-gather- 
ing — went stark-staring mad, and 
was, by the City charity, removed to 
Bedlam Hospital in Moorfields. There 
he raved for a time imagining him- 
self to be the Pope of Rome, with a 
paper-cap for a tiara, an ell-wand for 
a crosier, a blanket for a rochet, and 
bestowing his blessings on the other 
Maniacs with much force and vehem- 
ence ; and there, poor demented crea- 
ture, he died in the year 1740. 

Much better would it have been for 
me, had I gone straight off my Head 
and had been sent to howl in Bedlam, 
than that I should have married that 
same thievish catamaran, Madam Taf- 
fetas. Surely never Madman deserv- 
ed a Dark House and a Whip more 
than I did for that most foolishly con- 
tracted union. I defy Calumny to 
prove that I ever used any thing ap- 
proaching false representations in this 
matter. I told her plainly that my 
Hand, Sword, and Deep Devotion were 
all I had to offer, and that for mere vile 
pounds, shillings, and pence, and other 
Mercantile Arrangements, I must look 
to her. Absolutely I borrowed ten 
pieces, although I was then at a very 
Low Ebb, to defray the expenses of 
the wedding Treat, which was done 
most handsomely at the Bible and 
Crown, in Pope’s Head Alley, Corn- 
hill. “ Now then,” I said to myself, 
as we came home towards the Strand 
(for we were resolved to have no fool- 
ish honeymooning in the Country, but 
to remain in town and keep an eye to 


Business), — “now then, Jack Dan- 
gerous, thou art at last Married and 
Settled, and need trouble thyself no 
more about the cares and anxieties of 
money-grubbing and bread-getting. 
Thou art tiled-in handsomely, Jack ; 
thatched and fenced, and girt about 
with Comfort and Respectability. Thy 
hat is on, and thy house is covered.” 
Alas poor fool ! alas, triply distilled 
zany and egregiously doting idiot ! 
No sooner did a Hackney coach set 
us down at the Leghorn Warehouse 
in the broad part of the Strand, than 
we found Margery the maid and 
Tom the shopboy in a great confusion 
of tears on the threshold ; and imme- 
diately afterwards we heard that dur- 
ing our absence to get married, Bail- 
iffs had made their entrance, and seized 
all the Merchandise for a bill owing 
by Madam Taffetas to her Factor of 
Seven Hundred Pounds. The false 
Quean that I was wedded to was hope- 
lessly bankrupt, and with the greatest 
impudence in the world she calls upon 
me to pay the Money ; the Bailiffs 
adding, with a grin, that to their 
knowledge she owed much more than 
their Execution stood for, and that no 
doubt so soon as it was bruited abroad 
that I was her Husband, the Sheriff 
of Middlesex would have something 
to say to me in the way of a capias 
against my person. In vain did I 
Rave and Swear, and endeavor to 
show that I could in no way be held 
liable for Debts which I had never 
contracted. Such I was told was the 
law ; and such it remains to this day, 
to the Great Scandal of justice and 
the detriment of Gentlemen cavalieros 
who may be entrapped into marrying 
vulgar Adventuresses whom they deem 
Gentlewomen of Property, and who 
turn out instead to be not worth two- 
pence-halfpenny in the world. Nor 
were words wanting to add dire Insult 
to this astounding Injury ; for Madam 
Taffetas, now Dangerous, as I groan- 
ingly remembered, must needs call 
me Mercenary Rascal, Shuffling Pick- 
thank, Low-minded Fortune-hunter, 
and the like unkind names. 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


Madam Dangerous indeed ! But I 
am thankful to Providence that the 
title she assumed very soon fell away 
from her, and that I was once more 
left free and Independent. For whilst 
we were in the very midst of Hot Dis- 
pute and violent Recrimination comes 
a great noise at the door as though 
some one were striving to Batter it 
down. And then Margery the Maid 
and Tom the shop-lad began to howl 
and yelp again, crying out Murder and 
thieves, and that they were undone, 
the Bailiffs smoking their Pipes and 
drinking their Beer meanwhile, as 
though they enjoyed the Humors of the 
Scene hugely, and my wicked wife 
now pretending to faint, and now mak- 
ing at me with the avowed Design of 
tearing my eyes out. Presently comes 
lurching and staggering into the room 
a Great Hulking Brute of a man that 
was attired like a Sea Captain ; and 
this Roystering Tarpaulin makes up 
without more ado to my Precious Part- 
ner, gives her two sounding Busses 
on either side of her cheeks, and sa- 
lutes her as his wife. 

“ Your wife ! ” I cried, starting up ; 
“ why, she’s my wife ! I married her 
this very morning, and to my sorrow, 
before Parson Hodge, the Couple-Beg- 
gar, at the Fleet.” 

“ That may be, Brother,” answers 
the Sea Captain, with drunken grav- 
ity ; “ but she’s my wife, for all that. 
Y r ou married her this morning, you 
say. I married her five years ago at 
Ilorsleydown, and in the Parish 
church. I’ve got the ’Stifficate to 
prove it ; and though I say it that 
shouldn’t, there’s not a Finer woman, 
with a neater ancle and such a Devil 
of a temper, to be found ’twixt Beachy 
Head and Cape Horn.” 

“ A fig for both of you,” bellows 
Madam Taffetas, who had gone into 
one of her Sham Faints in the arm- 
chair, but was now conveniently re- 
covered again. “ If I’m married to 
both of you — to you, you pitiless 
Grampus ” (this was to the Sea Cap- 
tain), “ and to you, Ruffian, Bully, 


and Stabster ” (this was to me), “ I’m 
married to somebody else, and my 
real Husband is a Gentleman, who, 
if he were here, would quoit the pair 
of you into the street from Exeter 
Change to the Fox under the Hill.” 

She said this in one Scream, and 
then Fainted, or pretended to Faint 
. again. 

“ Brother,” said the Sea Captain to 
me, staggering a little (for he confess- 
ed to having much mixed punch under 
hatches), but still very grave, — 
“ brother, I think as how it’s clear 
that we’re both of us d — d fools, and 
d — d lucky fellows at the same time.” 

“ Amen ! ” cries one of the Bailiffs, 
with a guffaw. 

“ You belay,” remarked the Cap- 
tain, turning towards the vermin of 
Law with profound disdain. “ Broth- 
er” (turning to me), “ is the Press 
out ? ” 

“ What do you mean ? ” I inquired. 
“ You know that there’s no warrant 
for press-gangs in this part of the 
Liberties of Westminster.” 

“ Liberty be Hanged ! ” quoth the 
Sea Captain. “If there was any 
liberty, there couldn’t be a press, for 
which I don’t care a groat, for I’m a 
master mariner. This is what I mean. 
Is them landlubbers there part of a 
press-gang ? Are you trapped, broth- 
er ? Are you in the bilboes ? Are 
you in any danger of being put under 
hatches ? ” 

“ Why,” upspoke one of the Bailiffs, 
answering for me, “ the truth is that 
we are Sheriff’s Sergeants, and have 
made seizure, according to due writ 
of fi. fa. of this worthy lady’s goods. 
We’ve nothing at all against the gentle- 
man who says that he married her this 
morning ; but as you said that you’d 
married her five years ago, it’s very 
likely that we, or some of our mates, 
shall have something to say to you, in 
the form of parchment, between this 
and noon to-morrow. 

“ Very well,” answers the Strange 
Seaman. “You speak like a Man o’ 
War’s chaplain, some Lies and some 


158 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


Lingo, but all of it rl — d Lamed. 
Have you got ’ere a drop of rum, 
brother ? ” 

u There’s nothing here but some 
Three-Thread Swipes,” responds Mr. 
Bailiff ; u and, indeed, we were wait- 
ing until the gentleman treated us to 
something better.” 

“ Then,” continues the Captain, 
“ You shall have some rum. Youu- 
ker, go and fetch these gentlemen 
some liquor ; ” and lie flings a crown 
to the shop-lad. u You may drink your 
grog and blow your baccy,” he went 
on, “ as long as ever you like, and 
much good may it do you. And as 
for you, Pig-faced Nan,” — in this un- 
civil manner did he address the false 
Madam Taffetas, — u you may go to 
bed, or to the Devil, ’zactly as you 
choose, and settle your Business with 
the Bailiffs in the morning ’zactly as 
you like. And you and I, brother,” 
he wound up, taking me by the arm 
in quite a friendly manner, “ will just 
go and take our grog and blow our 
baccy in peace and quietness, and 
thank the Lord for it.” 

All this he said with great thick- 
ness and indistinctness of utterance, 
but with an immovable gravity of 
countenance. I never saw a Man 
who was manifestly so Drunk speak 
so sensibly, and behave himself in 
such a proper manner in my life. 

As he turned on his heel to leave 
the parlor where all this took place, I 
saw one of the Bailiffs rise stealthily as 
if to follow us. 

“ Belay there ! ” the Captain cried, 
advancing his mahogany Paw in a 
warning manner. “ Hold hard, ship- 
mates. I’m a peaceable man, and 
aboard they call me Billy the Lamb ; 
but, by the Lord Ilarry, if I catch 
you sneaking about, or trying to 
find out where I and this noble gentle- 
man be a going, I’m blest if I don’t 
split your skull in two with this here 
speaking-trumpet.” And so saying 
the Captain produced a very long tin 
tube, such as Mariners carry to make 
their voices heard at a distance at sea, 


and <;lo not carry with them in their 
walks. 

The Bailiffs were sensible men, and 
forbore to intermeddle with us any 
more. So we marched out of the 
House, it being now about nine o’clock 
at night ; and, upon my word, from 
that moment to this, I never set eyes 
upon Madam Taffetas, or Dangerous, 
or Blokes, — for the Sea Captain’s 
name, he afterwards told me, was 
Blokes, — or whatever her real Name 
was. It is very certain that she used 
me most scandalously, and cruelly be- 
trayed the trusting confidence of one 
that was not only a Bachelor, but an 
Orphan. 

Captain Blokes was a strange char- 
acter. We had a grand Carouse that 
night, he paying the Shot like a Gen- 
tleman ; and over our flowing Bowls, 
lie told me that he had long had sus- 
picions of his wife’s real character ; 
•and was, indeed, in possession of 
evidence (though he had kept it se- 
cret) to prove that she had given her- 
self in marriage to another man before 
she had Avedded him. And then, 
through the serving-lad, he had heard 
that very morning, on his coming into 
the Pool from Gravesend and Foreign 
Parts, that Madam, who thought him 
in China at least, and hoped him Dead, 
was about to enter into Wedlock once 
again ; so that, determined to have 
Sport, he had well Primed himself 
with Punch, and lurked about the 
neighborhood until Monsieur Tomfool 
and his Spouse (by which I mean 
myself, although no other man should 
call me so) had come home from the 
Fleet. And so all the Crying, and 
Lord ha’ Mercies, of the Wench and 
the Boy, were all subterfuges ; and 
they knew very well, the sly rogues, 
that the Sea Captain would soon be to 
the Fore. 

Nothing would suit him after this 
but that we should have Supper at the 
King of Prussia’s Head, in the Savoy, 
and, as I had given up my Lodgings 
as not Grand enough for me on the 
eve of my Wedding, and the Vessel 
of which lie was Commander was 


ut which they generally have aboard. 


159 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


lying in the Pool, that we should have 
Beds — at his charges — at the same 
Tavern ; and, indeed, your Seafaring 
Men, although rough enough, and 
smelling woundily of tar and bilge- 
water, are the most Hospitable Crea- 
tures breathing; and that makes Me 
so free with my Money when there is 
a Treat afoot ; albeit I can, without 
Vanity, declare myself Amphibious, 
for I have seen as much service by 
Sea as by Land, and have always ap- 
proved myself a Gentleman of Cour- 
age, Honor, and Discretion, on both 
Elements. 

The next morning, after a Nip of 
Aquavitce, to clear the Cobwebs out 
of our throats, we went down to Bil- 
lingsgate, where we saw my old 
humorous acquaintances, Brandy Sail, 
the fishwife, and the humorous porter, 
the Duke of Puddledock ; likewise a 
merry Wag, that did porterage work 
for the Fish Factors in the Market, 
and thereby seemed to have caught 
somewhat of the form of the fish be- 
neath which his shoulders were con- 
tinually groaning, so that all who 
could take that liberty with him called 
him Cod’s Head and Shoulders. Here 
we breakfasted ou new Oysters and 
Fried Flounders, with a lappet of Kip- 
pered Salmon, for Goodman Thirst’s 
sake, and a rare bowl of hot Coffee, 
which made us relish a Jug of Punch 
afterwards in a highly jocund manner. 
And then we fell to conversation ; and 
I, who had nothing to Conceal, and 
nothing to be Ashamed of, did recount 
those of my Adventures which I 
deemed would be most diverting (for 
I forbore to tell him those which were 
tedious and uneventful) to Captain 
Blokes. And he, not to be behind- 
hand in frank confidence, told me how 
many years lie had been at sea; how 
many merchant vessels he had com- 
manded ; and what Luck he had had 
in his divers Trading Adventures. 
Likewise, that he was now under en- 
gagement with some very worthy 
Merchants of Bristol, to man, equip, 
and command a vessel called The 
Marquis , which, in company with two 


others, the Hope and the Delight , were 
about to undertake a Cruising Voyage 
round the World. Finding from my 
speech that I was not wholly unac- 
customed to the Sea, and being made 
acquainted with what I had done in 
the West Indies and elsewhere, Cap- 
tain Blokes was pleased to say, that I 
was the very man for him, if I would 
join him. And at this time, in verity, 
it seemed as though nothing could suit 
me better ; for my Resources were 
quite exhausted, and I was brought 
very Low. So, after some further 
parley, and a good Beefsteak and 
Onions, and a bottle of Portugee Wine 
for dinner, we went to the Scrivener’s 
in Thames Street, by the name of 
Pritchett, that was Agent for the 
Company of Merchant Adventurers 
at Bristol ; and an Agreement was 
drawn up, by which, for Fifty Shil- 
lings a Month pay, all due rations and 
allowances, and a certain proportion 
of the profits to be divided among the 
Ship’s Company at the termination of 
our Adventure, I bound myself to 
serve Captain Blokes as Secretary and 
Purser of the ship Marquis. 

u Which means,” says he, when we 
had taken a Dram and shaken hands 
on signing articles, u that you are to 
Write, Fight, Drink, and keep Ac- 
compts, play put with me in the Cabin, 
assist me in preserving the Discipline 
of the Ship, sing a good song when 
you are called upon, help the Doctor 
to take care of the sick, and see that 
the Steward don’t steal the Grog and 
Tobacco ; and if you’ll stick to me, 
by the Lord Harry, Billy Blokes will 
stick to you. I like you because you 
were such a d — d fool as to go and 
marry that old woman.” 

The next day we took Coach at the 
Swan, by Paddington Church, for 
Bristol, and two days afterwards ar- 
rived at that great and flourishing 
Mercantile city. Nothing worthy of 
note on the road ; the Highwaymen, 
that were wont to be so troublesome, 
being mostly put down, owing to Jus- 
tice Fielding and De Vit’s stringent 
measures. We were much beset with 


IGu 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


gangs of wild Irish coming over from 
their own country a-harvesting in our 
fertile fields ; and those gentry were 
like to have bred a riot, quarrelling 
with the English husbandmen at Stow. 
Being at Bristol, comfortably housed 
at the Bible and Crown in Wine 
Street, — the landlord much given to 
swearing, but one of the best hands at 
making of Mum that ever I knew, — 
Captain Blokes had great work in set- 
tling business with the Company of 
Merchant Adventurers and Alderman 
Quarterbutt, their President. As it 
seems we were at war with the 
French and Spaniards, the Marquis 
(burden about 320 tons) was to carry 
twenty-six guns and a complement of 
108 men, letters of marque being 
granted to us by private Commission, 
with secret instruction as to Prizes and 
Plunder, so that the disposal of both 
should redound to the advantage of 
the Mariners, the Profit of our Em- 
ployers, and the honour of his Majes-, 
ty’s arms. We had nigh double the 
usual complement of officers usual in 
private ships, to prevent Mutinies, 
which ofttimes happen in long voyages, 
and that we might have a large pro- 
vision for a succession of officers in 
case of mortality. Iu the Marquis we 
had Captain Blokes, commander-in- 
•hief of the whole Armament, a Mari- 
ner ; a Second Captain, who was a 
Dr. of Physick, and also acted as 
President of our Committee (having 
much book-learning), and Commander 
of the Marines ; two Leftenants ; a 
Sailing Master ; a Pilot that was well 
acquainted with the South Seas, hav- 
ing been in those Latitudes twice be- 
fore ; a Surgeon and his Mate, or Lob- 
lolly boy ; Self as Secretary and Pur- 
ser ; two young lawyers, designed to 
act as Midshipmen ; Giles Cash, as 
Rcformado, — that was the title of 
courtesy given to those who were sent 
to sea in lieu of being hanged ; a Gun- 
ner and his crew ; a Boatswain, coop- 
er, carpenter, sailmaker, smith, and 
armourer, ship’s corporal, Sergeant of 
Marines, cook ; a Negro that could 
shave and play the fiddle ; and the 
11 


Ship’s company as aforesaid, one-third 
of whom were foreigners of every 
nation under the Sun, and of those 
that were His Majesty’s subjects many 
Tinkers, Tailors, Haymakers, Pedlars, 
&c. — a terribly mixed Gang, requir- 
ing much three-strand cord to keep 
’em in order. 

On the 2d August 1748, we weighed 
from King’s Road, by Bristol, and at 
ten at night, having very little wind, 
anchored between the Holms and 
Minehead. Coming on a fresh gale 
at S.E. and E.S.E. we ran by Mine- 
head at six in the morning. Next 
day the wind veered to N.E. and E.N. 
E. ; on the 4th there was but little 
wind, and smooth water ; on the 5th 
we saw Land ; and finding that we 
had overshot our port, which was 
Cork, came to an anchor at noon off 
the two rocks near Kinsale. At eight 
at night we weighed, having a Kinsale 
Pilot on board, who was like to have 
endangered our safety, the night being 
dark and foggy, and the Pilot not 
understanding his Business ; so that 
he nearly turned us into the next Bay 
to the westward of Cork, which pro- 
voked Captain Blokes to chastise him 
publicly on the quarter-deck. Our 
two consorts got into Cork before us, 
and we did not anchor in the Cove 
until the 7th August, at three in the 
afternoon. We stayed here until the 
28th of the month, getting in stores 
and provisions, and replacing as many 
of our tailors and haymakers as we 
could with real Sailors that could work 
the Ship. Our crew, however, were 
continually Marrying while we were 
at Cork, to the great Merriment of 
Self and Captain Blokes, who had 
seen enough and to spare of that 
Game ; but they woidd be Spliced, al- 
though they expected to sail imme- 
diately; among others, there was a 
Danish man coupled by a Romish 
Priest to an Irish woman, without 
understanding a word of each other’s 
language, so that they were forced to 
use an Interpreter ; yet I perceived this 
pair seemed more afflicted at separa- 
tion than anv of the rest. The Fel- 
161 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


low continued melancholy for many 
days after we were at Sea. The rest, 
Understanding each other and the 
world better, drank their cans of Flip 
till the very last Minute, concluded 
with a health to our good voyage and 
their next Happy Meeting, and then 
Departed, quite unconcerned. 

We took sailing orders on the 1st 
of Septemder ; and then Captain 
Blokes discovered to the crew whither 
we were bound,— that is to say, on a 
four years’ voyage, — in order that, if 
any Disorders should arise among us, 
we might exchange our Malcontents 
while in company with one of Ilis 
Majesty’s ships. But no complaint 
was found on board the Marquis , ex- 
cept from one fellow who was expected 
to have been Tithing man that year 
in his Parish, and said his wife would 
be obliged to pay Forty shillings in 
his absence ; but seeing all hands satis- 
fied, he was easily quieted, and drank 
With the rest to a prosperous voyage. 
On the 2d September we, having 
cleaned and tallowed our ships five 
streaks below the Water-line, the fid- 
dler struck up “ Lumps o’ Pudding,” 
land to follow that 44 Cold and Raw,” 
the Ship’s company joining chorus 
with a will, and so fell down to the 
Spit End by the Culloden Man of War, 
as our two Consorts had done the 
Night before. When we came to the 
Spit End, Captain Blokes saluted the 
Culloden with Seven Guns, to which 
they returned Five in courtesy, and 
then we again Three for thanks. And 
so commenced my Journey round the 
World. 

Chapter the Nineteenth. 

MERCATOR HIS PROJECTION, AND WHAT 
CAME OF IT. 

Meaning simply this, that I have 
often and often, as a little Lad, gazed 
upon the Great Map — very yellow, 
and shiny, and cracked on its canvas 
mounting it was — of the World, upon 
Mercator’s Projection, and devoutly 
longed for the day to arrive when it 
might be my fortune to make a Voyage 


of Circumnavigation. Such a Map, 
I remember, hung in the Schoolroom 
at G nawbit’s ; and I have often been 
cruelly beaten for gazing at it and 
pondering over it, instead of endeavor- 
ing to commit to memory a quantity 
of Words, the meaning of which I 
could not for the life of me under- 
stand. 

Now, indeed, I had got my Desire, 
and was going round the World in a 
Ship well found with Men and Stores, 
occupying myself a responsible posi- 
tion, and one giving me some Author- 
ity, and enjoying the full Confidence 
of my Commander, who was, both 
when sober and inebriated (and he 
was mostly the latter) , one of the most 
sagacious men I ever knew. He spoke 
seldom, and then generally with a 
Hiccup ; but what he said was always 
to the Purpose. I doubt not, if Cap- 
tain Blokes had been in the Royal 
Navy, he would by this time be flying 
his pendant as Admiral. 

’T would fill a volume to give you a 
Narrative, however brief, of our Voy- 
age. One does not go round the 
World quite so easily as a Cit taking 
a Wherry from Lambeth Walk to 
Chelsea Reach. No, no, my Masters ; 
there are Perils to encounter, Obsta- 
cles to overcome, Difficulties to sur- 
mount ; and I flatter myself that Jack 
Dangerous was not found wanting 
When a Stout Heart, a Strong Hand, 
and a Clear Head were needed. I 
repeat that ’tis impossible for me to 
give you an exact Log of so lengthy 
a Cruise ; and you must needs be 
content if I set down a few bare Items 
of the most notable Things that befell 
us. 

On 11th September we chased a 
strange Sail, and after three hours 
Came up with her. She proved to be 
a Swedishman. After firing a couple 
of Shots at full Random at her, to 
show that we meant Mischief if pro- 
voked, and one of which Shots, I be- 
lieve, passed over her Taffrail, and 
killed a Black Servant and the Cap- 
tain’s Monkey, Captain Blokes boarded 
her in his Yall ; examined the Master, 


The Strange Adventures 

and searched the Ship for Contraband 
of War; but not finding any save a 
suspicious quantity of salted Reindeer’s 
Tongues, our Committee agreed that 
she could not be considered a lawful 
Prize ; and not being willing to hinder 
time by carrying her into any Harbor 
for further Examination, we let her go 
without the least Embezzlement. The 
Master gave us a dozen of his Rein- 
deer Tongues, and a piece of dry Rufft 
Reef; and we presented him with a 
dozen bottles of Red-streak Cider. 
Rut while Captain Rlokes and the 
Doctor of Physic and Self were aboard 
the Swede taking a social Glass with 
him, our rascally crew took it into 
their heads to Mutiny, their Grievance 
being that the vessel was a Contra- 
band, and ought to be made a Prize 
of. The plain truth was, that the 
Rogues thirsted for Plunder. The 
Boatswain was one of the Mutineers. 
Him we caused to receive Four Dozen 
from the hands of his own Mates, and 
well laid on ; about a dozen of the 
rest we put in Irons, after having 
Drubbed ’em soundly, and fed ’em up- 
on Rread-and-Water ; but at the end of 
a few days they begged Pardon, and, 
on promising Amendment, were allow- 
ed to return to their Duty. 

18th September we came in sight 
of Pico Teneriffe, bearing S.W. by 
W., distant about eight leagues. This 
day we spied a Sail under our Lee 
Row, between the Islands of Grand 
Canaries and Forteventura. She show- 
ed us a clean Pair of Heels ; but we 
gave Chase, and after seven hours 
came up with her. She proved a 
Prize, safe enough : a Spanish Bark, 
about 25 tons, with some 45 passen- 
gers, who rejoiced much when they 
found we were English, having fancied 
that we were Turks or Sallee Rovers. 
Amongst our Prisoners were four 
Friars, awl with them the Padre 
Guardian of Forteventura, a good, 
honest old fellow, fat, and given to 
jollity. Him we made heartily merry, 
drinking the Spanish King’s Health, 
for nought else would he Toast. After 
we had made all Snug, we stood to 


of Captain Dangerous . 

the Westward with our Prize to Tene- 
riffe, to have her ransomed, that is to 
say, her Hull ; for her Cargo was not 
worth redeeming, being extremely 
shabby, — one or two Butts of Wine, a 
Hogshead of Brandy, and other small 
matters, which we determined to keep 
for our own use. The Spanish Don3 
made a mighty pother about paying, 
pleading that the Trade of these 
Islands enjoyed an immunity from 
Privateering by arrangement between 
his Catholic Majesty and the King of 
Great Britain, and were even seconded 
by some English Merchants of Tene- 
riffe, that were frightened at the thought 
of the cruel Reprisals the Dons might 
exercise after we went away, both on 
their Persons and Properties ; for Jack 
Spaniard is one that, if he cannot 
have Meal, will have Malt. But we 
soon let ’em know that Possession was 
Nine Points of the Law, and that we 
were resolved to stick to our Prize 
unless we got Ransom, which they 
presently agreed to. At eight o’clock 
the next morning we stood into the 
Port, close to the Town, and spied a 
Boat coming off, which proved to be 
the Deputy Governor, a Spanish Don 
with as many names as an English 
pickpocket has Aliases, and one Mr. 
Harbottle, that was English Vice-Con- 
sul. They brought us Wine, Figs, 
Grapes, Hogs, and other Necessaries, 
as Ransom in Kind for the Bark ; and 
accordingly we restored her, as also 
the Prisoners, with as much as we 
could find of what belonged to their 
Persons ; although, Truth to tell, some 
of our wild Reformadoes had used 
them somewhat unhandsomely. All 
the Books, Crucifixes, Reliques, and 
other superstitious things, we care- 
fully gave back to the Friars ; to the 
Padre a large Cheese, at which he was 
much delighted ; and to another Re- 
ligious, who had been stripped nearly 
as bare as a Robin, a pair of Breeches 
and a Red Nightcap. And so stood 
off, giving Three Cheers for King 
George, and one, with better luck next 
time, for the King of Spain ; and I 
doubt not that they cursed us heartily 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


that same night in their Churches, for 
Heretics. Now we had an indifferent 
good stock of Liquor, to be the better 
able to endure the Cold when we got 
to the length of Cape Horn, which, 
we were iuformed, had always very 
Cold Weather near it. 

On the 25th, according to custom, 
we Ducked those that had never passed 
the Tropic before. The manner of 
doing it was to reeve a Rope in the 
Mainyard, to hoist 'em about half-way 
up to the Yard, and let ’em fall at 
once into the Water ; they being com- 
fortably Trussed by having a Stick 
'cross through their Legs, and well 
fastened to the Rope, that they might 
not be surprised and let go their Hold. 
This proved of great use to our Fresh- 
water Sailors, to recover the Color of 
their Skins, which had grown very 
Black and Nasty. Those that w r e 
Ducked in this manner Three Times 
were about 60 ; and others that would 
not undergo it could redeem them- 
selves by a Fine of Ilalf-a-Crown, to 
be Levied and Spent at a Public Meet- 
ing of all the Ships’ Companies when 
we returned to England. The Dutch- 
men we had on board, and some few 
English, desired to be Ducked, some 
six, others eight and ten times, to have 
the better title for being Treated when 
they came home. 

On the 1st October we made St. 
Vincent, where our Water began to 
smell insufferably ; so had some Coop- 
ers from the Hope and Delight to 
make us Casks, and take in a fresh 
Stock. 

On the the 3d we sent a boat to St. 
Antonio, with one of our Gunners’ 
Crew that was a very fair Linguist, to 
get Truck for our Prize Goods what 
w r e wanted ; they having plenty of 
Cattle, Pigs, Goats y Fowls, Melons, 
Potatoes, Limes, and ordinary Bran- 
dies, Tobacco, Indian Corn, &c. Our 
people were very meanly stocked with 
Clothes ; yet we were forced to watch 
our men very narrowly, and Punish 
some of 'em smartly, to prevent their 
selling what Garments they had, for 
mere Trifles, to the Negroes. 


We got all we wanted by the 8th; 
but our Linguist gave us leg-bail ; and 
as he was much given to telling of 
Lies, we did not go to the pains of 
sending a party of Marines on shore 
after him. This is the place whither 
the Blacks come from St. Nicholas to 
make Oil of Turtle for the anointing 
of their Nasty Bodies withal. There 
was much good Green Turtle at this 
time of the year, which made me think 
of my old Jamaica days ; but our 
men, in a body, refused to eat it, much 
preferring Salt Junk. 

Item. — Many Flying Fish about 
here. 

Nothing more worthy of note till 
the 22d October, when Mr. Page, 
Second Mate, made an attack on his 
superior officer, the Doctor of Physic, 
with a Marline-spike ; and, but for a 
very large Periwig he wore, which 
was accounted odd in one having a 
Maritime Command, would have fin- 
ished him. Mr. Page was had to the 
Forecastle and clapped in the Bilboes, 
and Captain Blokes was for Hanging 
him off-hand as an Example to the 
rest ; but I, as Secretary, pointed out 
to him that there was no Power of 
Life and Death in our Instructions, 
and that it would be folly to run the 
risk of a Praemunire when we made 
Home again. With much trouble I 
succeeded in dissuading him from his 
Design ; so that the Mate was only 
lashed to the Main-gears and soundly 
Drubbed. Fair, pleasant Weather, 
and a fresh Gale. One that had se- 
creted a Peruke, and a pair of scarlet 
Stockings with silver Clocks, out of 
the plunder of the Spanish Bark, did 
also receive Rib-roasting enough (this 
was on a Sunday, after Prayers) to 
last him for a Fortnight. 

On the 10th of November, after a 
terrific Tornado and Thunder and 
Lightning, that frightcn<!tl some of 
our Tailors and Haymakers half into 
Fits, we came to an Anchor in 22- 
fathom water, in a sandy bay off the 
land of Brazil. Caught some Tor- 
toises for their Shells, for they have 
too strong a taste to be Eatable. A 


164 


The Strange Adventures 

Portugee boat came from a Cove in 
the Island of Grande, on our Star- 
board side, and said they had been 
robbed by the French not long since. 
Captain Blokes, the Doctor, and Self 
went ashore to Angre de Keys, as it 
is called in Sea-Draughts ; but, as the 
Portugee call it, Nostra Senora de la 
Concepcion, a small village about three 
leagues distant, to wait on the Gover- 
nor, and make him a present of Butter 
and Cheese. As we neared the shore, 
the People, taking us for Mounseers, 
fired a few Musquetoons at us, which 
did us no Hurt ; and when they found 
out who we were, they very Humbly 
Begged our Pardon. The Friars in- 
vited us to their Convent, and told us 
they had been so often stripped and 
abused by King Lewis’s frog-eating 
Subjects, that they were obliged to 
take measures to Defend themselves ; 
and, indeed, ’twas these said Padres 
who had fired at us. The Governor 
was gone to Rio Janeiro, a city about 
twelves leagues distant, but was ex- 
pected back next day. We got our 
empty Casks ashore, and sent our 
Carpenter, with a friendly Portugee, 
to look out Wood for Trustle-trees, 
both our Main and Fore being broke; 
but the Weather was so Wet and 
violent Sultry, that we could do no- 
thing. Here are abundant Graves of 
Dead Men ; and the Portugees told us 
that two great French ships, home- 
ward bound from the South Seas, that 
Watered in this same place about nine 
months before, had buried nearly Half 
their men here; but ’twas at the 
Sickly season, and the French have a 
marvellous foul way of Living. The 
people very Civil ; and we offered ’em 
handsome Gratuities if they would 
catch such of our men as might run 
away, which they promised to do most 
Cheerfully. 

Hearing of a Brigantine (this was 
some days afterwards) at the entrance 
of the Bay of Grande, we sent our 
Pinnace manned and armed to know 
all about her. She turned out to be a 
Portugee laden with Negroes, poor 
Creatures! for the Gold-mines. Our 


of Captain Dangerous . 

boat returned, and brought as presents 
a Roove of Fine Sugar and a Pot of 
Sweetmeats from the Master, who 
spoke a little English, and had formerly 
sailed with ’em. The Portugee are 
cautious in saying how far it is to the 
Gold-mines ; but, I believe the dis- 
tance by water is not great ; and there 
is certainly abundance of Gold in the 
country. The French took about 
1200Z. worth out of their boats last 
autumn at one Haul, which makes the 
Portugees hate ’em so. Some of ’em 
brought us a Monstrous Creature 
w r hich they had killed, having Prickles 
or Quills like a Hedgehog, and the 
head and tail of a Monkey. It stank 
abominably, which the Portugees said 
was only the Skin, and that the Meat 
of it w r as very Delicious, and often 
used for the table ; but our men not 
being yet on Short Commons, none of 
’em had Stomach enough to try the 
Experiment, so that we were forced to 
throw it overboard to make a Sweet 
Ship. Our people could now hardly 
go ashore without being frightened, as 
they thought, by Tigers, and holloaing 
to be taken aboard again ; but there 
was nothing more dangerous here- 
abouts than Apes and Baboons. 

Twenty-seventh November w r as a 
grand Festival at Angre de Keys, in 
honor of one of their Saints. We, 
and most of our officers from the Hope 
and the Delight , went ashore and were 
received by the Governor, Signor 
Raphael de Silva Lagos, with much 
civility. He asked if we would see 
the Convent and Procession ; and 
on our telling him our Religion dif- 
fered very much from his, answered 
that we were willing to see it without 
partaking in the Ceremony. We 
waited on him in a Body, being ten 
of us, with two Trumpets and Haut- 
boys, which he desired might play us 
to Church, where our Music did the 
office of an Organ, but separate from 
the Singing, which was very well 
chanted by the Padres. Our Trum- 
pets and Hautboys played “ Hey Boys, 
up go we ! ” and all manner of paltry 
noisy tunes; and, after service, the 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


Musicians, who were by this time 
more than half-drunk, marched at the 
head of the Company : next to them 
an old Padre and two Friars, carrying 
Lamps of Incense. Then the Image 
of the Saint, as Fine as a Milkmaid’s 
Garland, borne on a Bier, all spangled, 
on the shoulders of four men, and 
bedizened out with Flowers, Wax- 
candles, &c. After these, the Padre 
Guardian of the Convent, and about 
forty Priests in their full Habits. Next 
came the Governor ; Captain Blokes, 
in a blue Navy Coat laced with Gold, 
a pair of scarlet-velvet Breeches, and 
a Military Hat ; and the rest of the 
English officers in their very best Ap- 
parel. I was fit to die a’laughing, 
and w hispered to our Doctor of Physic, 
that had I know r n I was fated to walk 
in such a Procession, I would never 
have sold my old Tower Warder’s 
slashed doublet to the Frippery Man 
in Monmouth Street, but would have 
brought it round the World with me 
to wear at this Outlandish place. Each 
of us had moreover, in Compliment to 
his Saintship, a long Candle, lighted, 
in his hand ; the which gave us great 
Diversion, flaring the tapers about, 
and seeking to smoke one another. 
The Ceremony held about two hours, 
after -which we were splendidly enter- 
tained at the Convent, and then by the 
Governor at the Guard-house, his own 
habitation being about three leagues 
off. It is to be noted, they Kneeled 
at every Crossway, and turning, walked 
round the Convent, and came in at 
another door, bowing down and paying 
their devotion to the Images and the 
Wax-candles, with the like supersti- 
tious observances. They unanimously 
told us, however, that they expected 
nothing from us but our Company; 
and, beyond the Trumpets and Haut- 
boys, and a jolly Song or two from 
us, they had no more. Many Sharks 
were in the Road, that keep the Negro 
Slaves in good order, should they, poor 
Black Fellows, attempt Escape to any 
foreign ship by swimming to her. 
But the Portugees are not very hard 


with their Negroes, save up at the 
Gold-mines, where Mercy is quite un- 
known. Aqua d'oro may be a very 
good Eye- water ; but, sure, there’s 
nothing like it for hardening of the 
Heart. 

On the 28th of this Month we bade 
farewell to our kind friends of Angre 
de Keys. Just before sailing we sent 
a Boat to the town for more Neces- 
saries, and brought off some Gentle- 
men, w T hom we treated to the very best 
we could. They were very glorious, 
and in their Cups proposed the Pope’s 
Health to us ; but we were quits with 
’em by toasting that of the Archbishop 
of Canterbury; and, to keep up the 
humor, -we also proposed Martin 
Luther : but this fell flat, as they had 
never Heard of him ; whereas that 
of his Grace at Lambeth turned out 
rather against us than for us ; for they 
cried out that they knew him very 
well, and that he was a Catholic Saint, 
under the style and title of San Tomaso 
de Cantorberi. 

December 1st, we weighed with a 
breeze at N. E. ; but later came on a 
gale S.S.W., forcing us to anchor 
close under the Island of Grande. 
About 10 next morning we weighed 
again, and bore away and steered away 
S. W. Now the product of Brazil is 
-well known to be Red Wood, Sugars, 
Gold, Tobaccos (of every kind, and 
very choice), Whale Oil, Snuff, and 
several sorts of Drugs. The Portu- 
gecs build their best ships here. The 
people very Martial ; and ’tis but a 
few years since they would be under 
no Government, but have now sub- 
mitted to the House of Braganza, 
which makes a Pretty Penny out of 
them. Their Customs are very nasty ; 
their Houses marvellously foul; and 
they are forever smoking of Tobacco ; 
but the Portugees are still a very 
friendly folk, cordial to us English, 
although they call us Heretics, and, 
but for their great love for roasting 
Jews, very tender-hearted. I like 
them much better than those Proud 
Paupers the Spaniards. A Beggax 


166 


The Strange Adventure s 

on Horseback is bad enough ; but 
Goodness deliver us from a Beggar on 
an Andalusian Jackass ! 

Memorandum . — Brazil discovered 
by the famous Americus Vespucius, 
that came after Captain Christopher 
Colomb. 

Nothing remarkable happened until 
December 6th, when we had close 
cloudy Weather, with Showers ; and, 
after that, some pretty sharp Gales. 
On the 15th the color of the water 
changed; and we sounded, but had 
no ground. On the 18th one of the 
Hope's men fell out of the Mizentop 
on the Quarter-deck, and broke his 
Skull ; so that he died, aud was buried 
next day. A brisk fellow, that ; from 
his merry ways used to be called Brim- 
stone Jemmy. After this, cold airy 
weather, and numbers of Porpoises, 
black on their backs and fins, with 
sharp white Noses. They often leaped 
high up in the water, showing their 
white bellies. Also, a plenty of Seals. 
December 23d we saw Land, appear- 
ing first in three, and afterwards in 
several Islands. The AVind being 
westerly, aud blowing fresh, we could 
not weather it, but was forced to bear 
away and run along Shore from three 
to four leagues distant. This we saw 
first was Falkland’s Land, described 
in few Draughts, and none lay it down 
right, though the Latitude agrees pretty 
well. December 25th saw Land again ; 
but could not get near enough to see 
whether it was inhabited ; in truth we 
were too much in a hurry to think of 
making Discoveries ; for at four in 
the Afternoon we sighted a Sail under 
our Leebow, gave chase, and got 
ground of her apace till Night came 
on. In the Morning we saw nothing, 
it being thick hazy Weather ; then, as 
ill luck would have it, it fell Calm, 
and having nothing else to do we 
Piped all hands to Punishment, and 
gave the Cook three dozen for burning 
Captain Blokes’ Burgoo. Then Grog 
served out, and we took an Observa- 
tion. Lat. 52.40. 

Wc kept on rowing and towing with 
Sweeps, and oui Boats ahead, until 


of Captain Dangerous . 

about six in the Evening; and the 
Chase appearing to be a large ship, we 
sent Boats aboard our Consort, and 
agreed to engage her. A fine breeze 
sprang up, and we got in our Sweeps 
and Boats, making all possible sail ; 
it came on thick again ; but we kept 
her open on the Larboard, and the 
Hope and Delight on the Starboard 
bow, and it being now Short Nights, 
we thought it impossible to lose one 
another. But the Master persuaded 
our Commander to shorten sail, saying 
that we should lose our Consorts if 
we kept on. Another Fog, and be 
hanged to it; but the next morning 
the Yellow Curtain was lifted up, and 
we saw the Chase about four miles 
ahead, which gave us a new Life. 
We ran at a great Rate, it being 
smooth water; but it coming on to 
blow more and more, the Chase out- 
bore our Consorts, and being to wind- 
ward she gave off, and came down 
very melancholy to us, supposing her 
to be a French Homeward-bound Ship 
from the South Seas. Thus, this Ship 
escaped ; and left us all, from the 
Commander to the Cabin-boys (who 
had a hard time of it that night, you 
may be sure), in the most doleful 
Dumps. 

Strong Gales to the 1st of January. 
This being New-Year’s Day, every 
officer was wished a Merry New Year 
by our Trumpets and Hautboys ; and 
we had a large tub of Punch, hot, 
upon the Quarter-deck, where every 
man in the Ship had above a Pint to 
his share, and drank to our Owners 
and Friends’ healths in Great Britain, 
to a Happy New Year, a good Voy- 
age, plenty of Plunder (Wo is me for 
that Homeward-bound Frenchman 
from the Southern Seas ! ), and a Safe 
Return. Aud then wc bore down on 
our Consorts and gave them three 
Huzzas, wishing them the like. 

Now, it being very raw cold W eather, 
we very much dn jaded scudding upon 
Icc ; so we fired Guns as Signals for 
the Hope and Deli ght to bring to, and on 
the 5th of January brought ourselves to, 
under the same reeled Topsails. Wo 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


feared at one time, from our Consorts 
having an Ensign in their Maintop 
Mastshrouds, as a Signal of Distress, 
that they had sprung their Mainmast ; 
so we made the Large again, our Ship 
working very well in a mighty great 
sea- When we were able to get within 
Hail of our Consorts, we asked them 
how they did, and how they had come 
to hoist the Wretched Rag. They 
answered, Pretty well, but that they 
had shipped a great deal of Water in 
lying by, and being forced to put be- 
fore the wind, the Sea had broke in at 
the Cabin Windows, filling the Steer- 
age and Waste, and was like to have 
spoiled several Men ; but, Heaven be 
thanked, all else was indifferent well 
with 'em; only it was intolerably 
Cold, and everything Wet. Captain 
Blokes sent me on board the Delight 
in our Yall, and I found them in a 
very disorderly Pickle, with all their 
Clothes a’drying: the Ship and Rig- 
ging covered with 'em from the Deck 
to the Maintop. They got six of their 
Guns into the Hold, to make the Ship 
lively. 

Aboard the Marquis died, on the 
8th, John Veale, a Landsman, having 
lain ill a Fortnight, and had a Swelling 
in the Legs ever since he left the 
Island of Grande. At nine at night 
we buried him ; and this was the first 
we had lost by Sickness since we left 
England. Until the 15th, cloudy 
Weather with Squalls of Rain, and 
fresh Gales at S.W. We now ac- 
counted ourselves round Cape Horn, 
and so in the South Seas. The French 
ships that first came to trade in these 
seas were wont to come through the 
Straits of Magellan ; but Experience 
has taught ’em since, that this is the 
best Passage to go round the Horn, 
where they have Sea Room enow, 
without being crushed and crowded as 
at a Ranelagh M asquerade ; and the 
Straits are in many places very nar- 
row, with strong Tides and no Anchor 
Ground. 

On the 31st of January, at seven in 
lue Morning, we made the Island of 
Juan Fernandez, bearing W.S.W., 


and about two in the Afternoon we 
hoisted our Pinnace out, and essayed 
to send one of our Lieutenants ashore, 
though we could not be less than four 
leagues off. As soon as it was Dark 
our men cried out that they saw a 
Light ashore ; our Boat was then about 
a mile from the Shore, and bore away 
for the Ship on our firing a Quarter- 
deck Gun, and several Muskets, show- 
ing Lanterns in our Mizen and Fcre- 
shrouds, that the Pinnace might find 
us again, whilst we plied to the lee of 
the Island. About two in the Morn- 
ing she came aboard, all safe. Next 
day we sent our Yall ashore about 
noon with the Master and Six Men, 
all well Armed ; meanwhile we cleared 
all ready for Action on board the 
Marquis. Our Boat did not return, 
so we sent our Pinnace with the Crew, 
likewise Armed : for we were afraid 
that the Spaniards might have had a 
Garrison there, and so seized ’em. 
However, the Pinnace returned, and 
brought abundance of Crawfish, but 
found nothing human ; so that the 
alarm about the Light must have 
been a mere superstition of the Ship’s 
Company. 

It was at this same Island of Juan 
Fernandez, in the year of our Lord 
1708-9, that Captain Woodes Rogers, 
commanding the “ Duke” Frigate, and 
with whom also Captain Dampier, 
that famous Circumnavigator, sailed, 
found a Man clothed in Goatskins, 
who looked wilder than they who had 
been the first owners of ’em. He had 
been on the Island four years and four 
months, being left there by Captain 
Stradling in the “ Cinque Ports ; ” his 
name was Alexander Selkirk, a 
Scottish man, who had been Sailing 
Master to the “ Cinque Ports ; ” but 
quarrelling with the Commander, was 
by him accused of Mutiny, and so 
Abandoned on this Uninhabited Island. 
During his stay he saw several Ships 
pass by, but only two came to an 
Anchor. As he went to view ’em he 
found they were Spaniards, and so 
retired, upon which they Shot at him. 


Had they been French, he would have 
168 


submitted ; but cbose to risk his dying 
alone on the Island rather than fall 
into the hands of the Spaniards, be- 
cause he apprehended they would 
Murder him, or make a Slave of him 
in the Mines ; for he feared they would 
spare no Stranger that might be capa- 
ble of Discovering the South Sea. He 
had with him when left his Clothes 
and Bedding, with a Firelock, some 
Powder, Bullets, and Tobacco, a 
Hatchet, a Knife, a Kettle, a Bible, 
some practical Pieces, and some Math- 
emetical Instruments and Books. Dur- 
ing the first eight months of his stay 
he suffered much from Melancholy 
and Terror ; but afterwards got on 
pretty well. He built two Huts with 
Pimento Wood, which he also burnt 
for Fuel and Candle ; and which, be- 
sides, refreshed him with its fragrant 
smell. He had grown very Pious in 
his Retreat, and was much given to 
singing of Psalms, having before led 
a very naughty life. Being a very 
good sailor, Captain Woodes Rogers 
took him away with him as Second 
Mate. He told ’em that he had been 
at first much pestered with Cats and 


Rats, the latter of which gnawed his 
feet and clothes, so that he was obliged 
to cherish the Cats with Goat’s-flesh, 
and they grew so familiar with him as 
to lie about him in hundreds. But I 
cannot stay to recount half the won- 
derful Adventures of Mr. Selkirk. I 
I knew him afterwards, a very old 
Man, lodging with one Mrs. Bran- 
body, that kept a Chandler’s Shop over 
against the Jews* Harp Tavern at 
Stepney. He was wont bitterly to 
complain that the Manuscript in which 
he had written down an Account of 
his Life at Juan Fernandez had been 
cozened out of him by some crafty 
Booksellers ; and that a Paraphrase, 
or rather Burlesque, of it, in a most 
garbled and mutilated form, had been 
printed as a Children’s Story-book, 
under the name of Robinson Crusoe. 
This was done by one Mr. Daniel 
Foe, a News writer, who, in my 
Youth, stood in the Pillory by Temple 
Bar, for a sedition in some plaguey 
Church-matters. But it is fitting to 
let these Gentry know that they havo 
Ears, lest they become too Saucy. 


ChAPTEP THE ' NTIETH. 

THE CONTINUATION O t MY VOYAGE UN- 
TIL MY RETURN A GAIN TO EUROPE. 

N ow, being gr \ away from J uan F er- 
nandez, did a'l unconquerable Greed 
and Longing for Prize and Plunder 
come over us ; and did we sweep the 
Horizon hour after hour as long as it 
was Light, in hope of satisfaction to 
our long-deferred Hope. March 2d 
we sighted Land, and a vast high 
ridge of Mountains they call the Cor- 
dilleras, and are in the Country of 
Chili, Some parts are, I believe, full 
as high, if not higher, than the Pico 
of Tereriffe, and the tops of all of ’em 
covered with Snow. This day we came 
to an allowance of Three Pints of 
Water a day for each man ; judging 
it ber.t to be Economical, although we 
had a good stock of water aboard (taken 
in at Juan Fernandez) ; but Captain 
Blokes’ reason was, to be able to keep 
at Soa for some time longer, and take 
some Prizes to keep the Deuce out of 
our pockets, without being discovered 
by Watering ; for our South-Sea Pilot 
told us that the timorous people of 
these Latitudes once smelling an En- 
emy hovering about, will put to sea 
with nothing of value from one end 
of the Coast to the other. Much 
baffled by several white Rocks that 
looked like Ships, and Captain Blokes 
much incensed at continual Disap- 
pointments, takes to making the Cabin- 
boy weary of his life ; and after drub- 
bing him with a Rope’s end three times 
doubled, was for sousing him in the 


Pickle-tub ; but I dissuaded him (re- 
membering the Torments I had my- 
self endured as a Moose ; and even 
now when I think of ’em I am Afraid, 
and Trembling takes hold of my Flesh), 
and so no more was Done to him, be- 
yond a Threat that he should be Keel- 
hauled next time ; although the poor 
lad had in no way misbehaved him- 
self. We got the two pinnaces into 
the water, to try ’em under sail, hav- 
ing fixed each of ’em with a Gun, 
after the manner of a Patterero, to be 
useful as small Privateers, hoping 
they’d be serviceable to us in little 
winds to take vessels. March 15th, 
Land again, and we supposed it was 
Lobos ; and sure enough, on the 17th, 
we got well unto anchor otf that Island, 
but found nobody at the place. On the 
19th we determined to fit out our small 
Bark for a Privateer, and launched 
her into blue waters under the name 
of the Beginning. To his great pride 
and delight, Captain Blokes appointed 
the Doctor of Physic to command her. 
She was well built for sailing, so she 
was had round to a small Cove in the 
Southernmost part of Lobos. A small 
Spar out of the Marquis made a Main- 
mast for her, and one of our Mizen 
Topsails was altered to make her a 
Mainsail. March 21st, all being ready, 
and the Beginning christened by Cap- 
tain Blokes’ emptying a Bowl of hot. 
Punch over her bow, she was vic- 
tualled from the general store ; and 
the Doctor of Physic, who, for all his 
Degree, claimed to be a good Mariner, 
took possession of his high and impor- 


> The Strange Adventures 

tant command. Twenty men from 
our ship, and ten from our Consorts, 
were put aboard her, all well Armed. 
We saw her out of the Harbor, and 
she looked very pretty, having all 
Masts, Sails, Rigging, and Materials, 
like one of those Half Galleys fitted 
out for his Majesty’s Service in Eng- 
land. They gave our Ship’s Company 
three Huzzas, and we returned them 
the like at parting. We told the Cap- 
tain-Doctor that if we were forced out 
of the Road, or gave chase hence, we 
would leave a Glass Bottle, buried 
under a remarkable Great Stone agreed 
upon, with Letters in it, to give an 
Account of how it was with us at the 
moment of our Departure, and where 
to meet again. And he was to do the 
like. When the Beginning was gone 
we fell to and scrubbed Ship, getting 
abundance of Barnacles off her much 
bigger than Mussels. Seals numerous 
but not so many as at Juan Fernandez. 
A large one seized upon a fat Dutch- 
man that belonged to us, and had like 
to have pulled him into the water, 
biting him to the bone about the arms 
and legs. This Hollander was hence- 
forth known as the Lord Chancellor, 
having been so very near the Great 
Seal. After barnacling, we gave the 
Marquis a good Keel, and Tallowed 
her low down. Another Dutchman 
we had died of the Scurvy. His Mess- 
mates said that it was because we had 
no more Cheese aboard, and that he 
could not catch Red Herrings by angling 
for them in Blue Water. 

March 28th. The little Beginning 
came in with a Prize, called the Santa 
Josepha , bound from Guayaquil to 
Truxillo, 50 tons burden, full of Tim- 
ber, with some Cocoa-nuts and Tobac- 
co. A very paltry Spoil. There were 
about twelve Spaniards aboard, who 
told us (after some little Persuasion, 
in the way of Drubbing) that the 
Widow of the late Viceroy of Peru 
would shortly embark at Acapulco, 
with her Family and Riches, and stop 
at Payta to Refresh ; and that about 
eight months ago there was a Galleon 
with 200,000 pieces of Eight on board, 


of Captain Dangerous, 

that passed Payta on her way to Aca- 
pulco. They continued, however, to 
Lie and Contradict themselves when 
questioned ; and so (as they howled 
most dismally on deck while under 
Punishment) they were had down to 
the Cockpit, where the Boatswain and 
his Mates had their Will of them, and 
I don’t know what became of them 
afterwards. These Spanish Prisoners 
give a great deal of Trouble. 

April 2d. The superstitious among 
us were heartily frightened at the Color 
of the Water, which for several miles 
looked as Red as any Blood. Some 
fellows among the crew that were of 
a Preaching Turn, gave out that this 
unusual appearance was an Omen, or 
Warning to us of Judgments coming 
for what had been done to the Spanish 
Prisoners (in the which Duresse I de- 
clare I had no hand ; ’twas all done 
by Captain Blokes’ orders, and ’tis 
very likely that the Boatswain, who 
•was a Rough Fellow, very ignorant, 
exceeded his instructions). It was 
explained, however, that this San- 
guinary Hue in the water was a per- 
fectly natural appearance, caused by 
the Spawn of Fish ; and two or three 
of the preaching fellows being had to 
the Maingears and well Drubbed, Grog 
was served out to the rest, and an 
Alarm, which might have bred a Mu- 
tiny, soon subsided. 

But Huzza ! on the 5th of April we 
had things more substantial to think 
of than Red Seawater ; for we took, 
after a very slight Resistance, a Ship 
called the Ascension, built Galleon- 
fashion, very high, with Galleries, 
Burden between 400 and 500 tons, and 
two Brothers Commanders, both Dons 
of families that were Grandees 500 
years before Adam was born, and of 
course with fivp-and-twenty Christian 
Names apiece. She had a number of 
Passengers and some fifty Negroes ; 
but the former being persons of Con- 
dition, far above the Common Sort, 
and not poor Coasting people, such as 
were those in the Timber Bark, we 
used ’em handsomely. They, without 
any such oersuasion as was employed 


171 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


to their forerunners, told us that the 
Bishop of Chokeaqua, a place far up 
the Country in the South Parts of 
Peru, was to have come from Panama 
in this vessel for Lima, but would stop 
at Payta to Recruit. Being near that 
place, we resolved to Watch narrowly, 
in order to catch his Lordship. 

Now to the Norrard, and on the 
10th of April we were off the Hum- 
mocks they call the Saddle of Payta ; 
and being very Calm, we held a Court- 
Martial on one of our Midshipmen 
who had threatened to shoot one of our 
men when at Lobos, merely for refus- 
ing to carry some Crows that he had 
shot. The Court was held in Captain 
Blokes* Cabin, and consisted of the 
Commander, Self, First-Lieutenant, as- 
sisted in our deliberations by sundry 
Pipes of Tobacco and a great Jug of 
Punch. Found Guilty. Sentenced to 
be Degraded before the Mast, to have 
his Grog stopped for a Fortnight, and 
to receive Four Dozen at the Gun (for 
he being a kind of Officer, we did not 
wish to Humiliate him on deck). 
Half of his Punishment he endured 
with more doleful Squalling than ever 
I heard from a Penitent in my Life, 
although the Boatswain was very ten- 
der with him, and three Tails of the 
Cat were tied up. He begged pardon, 
and so Captain Blokes remitted him 
the rest of his Punishment. This 
Midshipman was one who sang a very 
good Song ; and so a Cushion being 
brought to Ease him, we finished the 
Evening and the Punch j ovially enough , 
he being before the end in high favor 
with the Commander, and promised 
his Rating back again. 

April 15. The Officers of all three 
Ships met on board the Marquis , and 
the Committee came to a Resolution 
to attack Guayaquil at once. The 
Bark we had called the Beginning by 
this time had come back to us, having 
begun nothing and found nothing, since 
its first prize, except a great Sea Lub- 
ber, some kind of Monster that the 
Doctor of Physic had caught and 
•wanted to preserve in Rum, to make 
a Present of to the Royal Society when 


we came Home ; but we forbade his 
wasting good Liquor for so unworthy 
an end, and the Monster, smelling in- 
tolerably, was thrown overboard. 
’Twould have caused me no great 
sorrow to see the Doctor follow his 
Prodigy, for he was a very uncomfort- 
able Person, and was much given to 
cheating at Cards. 

April 20th. To our Boats off 
Guayaquil, a Great Company of Men 
and Officers all armed to the teeth. 
We rowed till 12 at night, when we 
saw Lights, which we judged to be a 
place called Puna. It blew fresh, 
with a small rolling Sea, the Boat I 
commanded being deep laden and 
crammed with men ; some of us said 
they would rather be in a Storm at 
Sea than here ; but, in regard we 
were about a charming Undertaking, 
we thought no Fatigue too hard. At 
daybreak we saw a Bark above us in 
the River; and, running down upon 
her, found it was a large Pinnace, full 
of the most considerable Inhabitants 
of Puna, escaping towards Guayaquil. 
Here were at least a dozen handsome 
genteel young W omen, extremely well- 
dressed, and from them our men got 
some fine Gold Chains and Earrings., 
Some of these Nicknacks were con- 
cealed about ’em ; but the Gentle- 
women in these parts being very thinly 
dressed in Silk and Fine Linen, they 
could hide but little, and our Linguist 
was bidden to advise them to be Wise 
in Time, and surrender their Valu- 
ables, which they did. And so civil 
were our Sailors to them, that they 
offered to dress some Victuals for us 
when we got ’em aboard ; which made 
us hope that the Fair Sex would be 
kind to us when we returned to Eng- 
land, for our discreet behavior to these 
charming Prisoners. 

***** 

I am afraid that during the Attack 
on Guayaquil, which took place the 
next day, and continued for the three 
following ones, when the place Ca- 
pitulated to our force, and a Treaty 
was signed between our Commanders 
and the Governor and Corregidor of 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


Guayaquil, sundry proceedings took 
place that would not very well have 
squared with the public ideas of what 
is due to the Fair Sex just treated of; 
but I declare that I had neither Art 
nor Part in them, and that I am en- 
tirely Free from any Responsibility 
that Censure might cast on the Authors 
of Cruel Disturbances ; for early in 
the Attack I was hit by a Musket-ball 
in the chest, and borne senseless to our 
Boats. That I did my Duty bravely, 
my Commander was good enough to 
say, and the whole Ship’s Company to 
admit. I was carried away to the 
Marquis , and for a long time lay be- 
tween Hawk and Buzzard ; for a 
smart Fever came about the third day, 
like Burgundy wine after Sherris, and 
I was for a while quite off my head 
and Raving about Old Times ; — about 
Captain Night and the Blacks, and 
Maum Buckey and her Negro W asher- 
women, and my Campaign against the 
Maroons, and some Other Things that 
had befallen me during those fifteen 
years which I have chosen to leave a 
Blank in my life, and which I scorn 
to deny did — some of them — lie heavy 
on my Conscience. All these were 
mixed up with the Old Gentleman at 
Gnawbit’s, and my Lord Lovat with 
his head off, and my Grandmother in 
Hanover Square ; so that I doubt 
whether those who tended me knew 
what to make of me. There was 
some difficulty too as to medical at- 
tendance, for we had cashiered our 
Surgeon — that is to say, he had run 
away at Grande in the Brazils, to 
marry a brown Portugee woman ; 
and the Doctor of Physic he was all 
for Herbal Treatment, demanding Suc- 
cory, Agrimony, Asarabacca, Knights- 
pound-wort, Cuckoo-point, Hulver- 
bush, with Alehoof, and other things 
not to be found in this part of the 
World. And Captain Blokes said 
that he knew nothing half so good for 
a Gunshot Wound as cold Rum-and 
Water; and between the two I had 
like to have died, but all were very 
kind to me, even to extracting the 
Ball with a Pair of Snuffers ; and a 


great clumsy thing the said missile 
was, being, I verily believe, part of a 
Door-hinge which these clumsy Span- 
ish Brutes had broken off short to 
cram into their Guns ; and yet it 
might have gone worse with me had 
it been a smooth round cast Bullet, 
and drilled a clean Wound right 
through my Body. 

As I was coming round, even to 
the taking of some Sangaree and 
Chicken Panada (for we were now 
very well provided with live Stock), 
the Captain said to me: “ You ha’n’t 
murdered a man, Brother, have you?” 

I replied, starting up, that my hands 
were free from the stain of Blood un- 
righteously spilt. 

“ No offence, Brother Dangerous,” 
continued the Captain. “ In our line of 
life we ar’n’t particular. It wouldn’t 
take very dirty weather to make our 
Ensign look like a Black Flag. Pi- 
racy and Privateering — they both 
begin with a P. I thought you had 
something o* that sort on your mind, 
because you took it so woundily about 
being hanged.” 

“ I have had a strange life,” I an- 
swered faintly. 

“ No doubt about that,” says the Cap- 
tain. “ So have I, Brother, and not 
an over-good one : that’s why I asked 
you. If the old woman hadn’t been 
in the oven herself, she’ d never have 
gone there to look for her daughter. 
But have you anything on your mind, 
Brother ? Is there anything that Billy 
Blokes can do for you ? ” 

I answered very gratefully, that 
there was nothing I could think of. 

“ ’Cause why,” he resumed, “ if 
there is, you have only to sing out. 
If you think you’re like to slip your 
Cable and would like to say some- 
thing, we’ve got a Padre on board out 
of the last Prize, and he shall come 
and do the Right Thing for you. 
You don’t know anything about his 
lingo ; but what odds is that ? Span- 
ish, or Thieves’ Latin, or right-down 
Cockney, — it’s all one when the word’s 
given to pipe all hands.” 

I answered that I was no Papist, 


173 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


but a humble member of the Church 
of England as by Law established. 

“ Of course,” concluded the Captain. 
u So am I. God bless King George 
and the Protestant Succession, and 
confound the Pope, the Devil, and the 
Pretender ! But any Port in a storm, 
you know ; and a Padre’s better than 
no Prayers at all. I’ve done all I 
could for you, Brother. I’ve read 
you most part of the story of Bel and 
the Dragon, likewise the Articles of 
War, and a lot of Psalms out of Stern- 
hold and Hopkins ; and now, if you 
feel skeery about losing the number of 
your mess, I’ll make your Will for 
you, to be all shipshape before the 
Big Wigs of London. There must be 
a matter of Four Hundred Pounds 
coming to you already for your share 
of Plunder ; and no one shall say that 
Billy Blokes ever robbed a Messmate 
of even a twopenny tester of his 
Rights.” 

Again I thanked this singular per- 
son, who, for all his Addictedness to 
Rum-and-Water, of which he drank 
vast quantities, was one of the most 
Sagacious men I have known. 
But I told him that I had neither kith 
nor kin belonging to me ; that I did 
not even know the name of my Father 
and Mother ; and that my Grandmo- 
ther, even, was an Unknown Lady, 
and had been dead nigh forty years. 
Finally, that if I made any Will, it 
would only be to the effect that my 
Property, if any, might be divided 
among the Ship’s Company of the 
Marquis , with a donative of Fifty 
Guineas to the Hope and Delight peo- 
ple to drink to my Memory. 

u Ay, and to a pleasant journey to 
Fiddler’s Green,” cries out the Cap- 
tain. u But cheer up, Heart ; ye’re 
not weighed for the Long Journey yet.” 
Nor had I ; for I presently recovered, 
and in less than a month after my Mis- 
hap was again whole and fit for Duty. 
And I have set this down in order to 
confute those malignant men who 
have declared that all my Wounds 
were from Stripes between the Shoul- 
ders ; whereas I can show the marks, 


l°,of an English Grenadier’s bayonet; 
2°, of a Frenchman’s sword ; 3°, of 
a Spanish bullet ; with many more 
Scars gotten as honorably, and which 
it would be only braggadocio to tell 
the History of. 

Item . — The Corregidores, or Head- 
Men of Guayaquil, are great Thieves. 
The Mercenary Viceroys not being 
permitted to trade themselves, do use 
the Corregidores as middle-men, and 
these again employ a third hand ; so 
that ships are constantly employed 
carrying Quicksilver, and all manner 
of precious and prohibited goods, to 
and from Mexico out of by-ports. 
Thus, too, being their own Judges, 
they get vast Estates, and stop all 
complaints in Old Spain by Bribes. 
But now and then comes out a Vice- 
roy who is a Man of Honesty and 
Probity, and will have none of these 
Scoundrelly ways of Making Money 
(like Mr. Henry Fielding among the 
Trading Justices, a Bright exception 
for integrity, though his Life, as I 
have heard, was otherwise dissolute), 
and then he falls to and squeezes the 
Corregidores, in the same manner as 
Cardinal Richelieu, that was Lewis 
Thirteenth’s Minister, was wont to do 
with the Financiers. “ You must 
treat ’em like Leeches,” said he ; u and 
when they are bloated with blood, put 
salt upon them, to make them dis- 
gorge.” And I have heard that this 
rigid System of Probity, and putting 
salt on the gorged Corregidores, has 
ofttimes turned out more profitable to 
the Viceroys than trading on their own 
account. 

Many of our men falling sick here, 
and our Ransom being now fully dis- 
bursed by the authorities of Guaya- 
quil, we made haste to get away from 
the place, which was fast becoming 
pestiferous. 

We set sail with more than fifty 
men Down with the Distemper (of 
which they were dying like Sheep with 
the Rot in the town, and all the Churches 
turned into Hospitals) ; but we hoped 
the Sea Air, for which we longed, would 
set us all healthy again. So plying 


174 


The Strange Adventures 

to windward, bearing for the Gallipa- 
gos Islands, and on the 21st of May 
made the most Norrard of that group. 
Jan Serouder, a West Frieslander, 
and very good Sailor, though much 
given to smoking in his Hammock, 
for which he had many times been 
Drubbed, died of the Distemper. A 
great want of Medicines aboard, and 
the Rum running very low. Sent 
a Boat ashore to see for Water, Fish, 
and Turtle, which our men (being now 
less Dainty by Roughing) had, by this 
time, condescended to eat. Kept on 
our course ; on the 27th the Eastern- 
most Island bore S.E. by S., distant 
about four leagues : and nothing more 
remarkable happened till the 6th of 
June, when we spied a Sail, the Hope 
being then about two miles ahead of 
us ; and about seven in the Evening 
she took her in a very courageous 
manner. This was a Vessel of about 
90 tons, bound.from Panama to Guay- 
aquil called the San Tomaso y San 
Demas (for these Spaniards can never 
have too much of a good thing in the 
way of Saints), Juan Navarro Nav- 
arrett y Colza, Commander. About 
forty people on board, and eleven Ne- 
gro Slaves, but little in the way of 
European goods save some Iron and 
Cloth. They had a passenger of note 
on board, one Don Pantaleone and 
Something as long as my Arm, who 
was going to be Governor of Baldivia, 
and said he had been taken not long 
Bince in the North Sea by Jamaica 
Cruisers. On the 7th June we made 
the Island of Gorgona ; and, on the 
8th, got to an anchor in 30 fathom 
water. The next day sent out our 
Pinnace a’cruising, and took a prize 
called the Golden Sun , belonging to a 
Creek on the Main, — a twopenny- 
half-penny little thing, 35 tons ; ten 
Spaniards and Indians, and a Negro 
that was chained down to the deck to 
amuse the Ship Company with play- 
ing on the Guitar (a kind of Lute). 
However, wc found a few ounces of 
Gold-dust aboard her, worth some 
sixty pounds sterling. After examin- 
ing our Prisoners (who gave us much 


of Captain Dangerous . 

trouble, for we had no Linguist, and 
*twas a Word and a Blow in question- 
ing them: that is, the Blow came 
from us to get the Word from ’em ; 
but not more than two or three Span- 
iards were Expended) , — after this te- 
dious work was over we held a Com- 
mittee, and agreed to go to Malaga, 
an Island which had a Road, and with 
our Boats tow up the River in quest 
of the rich Gold-mines of Barbacore, 
also called by the Spaniards San Juan. 
But heavy Rains coming on, we were 
obliged to beat back and come to Gor- 
gona again, Building a Tent ashore 
for our Armor and Sick Men. We 
spent till the 25th in Careening ; on 
the 28th we got all aboard agen, rig- 
ged and stowed all ready for sea ; the 
Spaniards who were our Prisoners, 
and who are very Dilatory Sailors (for 
they hearken more to their Saints than 
to the Boatswain’s Pipe) were much 
amazed at our Despatch ; telling us 
that they usually took Six Weeks or a 
Month to Careen one of their King’s 
Ships at Lima, where they are well 
provided with all Necessaries, and ac- 
count that Quick Expedition. We 
allowed Liberty of Conscience on 
board our floating Commonwealth to 
our Prisoners ; for there being a Priest 
in each ship, they had the Great Cab- 
in for their Mass, whilst we used the 
Church-of-England Service over them 
on the Quarter-deck. So that the Pa- 
pists here were the Low Churchmen. 
Shortly after the beginning of July we 
freed our prisoners at fair Ransom in 
Gold-dust ; but the village where we 
landed them was so poor in common 
Necessaries, that we were obliged to 
give them some corned beef and bis- 
cuit for their subsistence until they 
could get up the Country where there 
was a Town. Same day a Negro be- 
longing to the Delight was bit by a 
small brown speckled Snake, and died 
in a few hours. 

Wc had with us, too, a very good 
prize taken by the ZTope, and continued 
unloading this and transferring the 
rich contents to our ships, having 
promised to restore the Hull itself to 


175 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


the Spaniards, on her being hand- 
somely Ransomed ; and the Don that 
was to be Governor of Baldivia was 
appointed Agent for us, and suffered 
to go freely on his Parole to and fro 
to arrange Money-Matters with the 
Authorities up the Country. 

Memorandum . — Amongst our Pris- 
oners (taken on board the Panama 
ship) there was a gentlewoman and 
her Family, the Eldest Daughter, a 
pretty young woman of Eighteen, newly 
married, and had her husband with 
her. We assigned them the Great 
Cabin on board the Prize, and none 
were suffered to intrude amongst them ; 
yet the Husband (we were told) show- 
ed evident Marks of a Violent Jealousy, 
which is the Spaniard’s Epidemic Dis- 
ease. I hope he had not the least 
Reason for it, seeing that the Prize- 
Master (our Second Lieutenant) was 
above Fifty years of Age, and of a 
very Grave Countenance, appearing 
to be the most secure Guardian to fe- 
males that had the least Charm, though 
all our young Men (that were Officers) 
had hitherto appeared Modest beyond 
Example among privateers ; yet we 
thought it improper to expose them to 
Temptation. And I am sure, when 
the Lieutenant, being superseded for 
somewhat Scorching of a Negro with 
a stick of fire for answering him 
Saucily, and Captain Blokes bade me 
take temporary command of the Prize 
and Prisoners, that I behaved myself 
so well as to gain Thanks and Public 
Acknowledgments for my civility to 
the Ladies. We had notice that more 
than one of these Fair Creatures had 
concealed Treasure about ’em ; and 
so, in the most Delicate Manner we 
ordered a Female Negro who spoke 
English to overhaul ’em privately, and 
at the same time to tell ’em that it 
would pain us to the Heart to be 
obliged to use Stripes or other Un- 
handsome Means to. come to a Discov- 
ery. Many Gold Chains, Bracelets, 
Ouches, andi suchlike Whim-Whams 
the Sable Nymph found cunningly 
stowed away ; upon which we gave 
her half a pint of Wine and a large 


pot of Sweets, forgiving her at the 
same time a Whipping at the Capstan 
which had been promised her for 
Romping and Gammocking among 
the people in the Forecastle. For I 
suppose there was never a modester 
man than Captain Blokes. 

August 10th. All Money-Matters 
being arranged, we disposed of our 
Prisoners. We burnt down the Vil- 
lage for some Impertinence of the 
Head Man (who was a Half-caste In- 
dian), — but no great harm done, since 
’twas mostly Mud and Plantain thatch, 
and could be built up again in a Week, 
— and got to Windward very slowly, 
there being a constant current flowing 
to Leeward to the Bay of Panama. 
13th we saw the Island of Gallo ; the 
18th we spied a Sail bearing W.N.W. 
of us, when we all three gave chase, 
and took her in half an hour. 70 tons. 
Panama to Lima. Forty people 
aboard, upon examining whom they 
could tell us little News from Europe, 
but said that there came Advices from 
Portobello in Spain, and by a French 
ship from France, not long before they 
came out of Panama ; but that aU 
was kept private ; only, they heard 
that his Royal Highness the Duke of 
Cumberland was Dead, the which sad 
Intelligence we were not willing to 
Believe, but drank his Health at Night, 
which we thought could do him no 
hurt even if he really happened to be 
Dead. By this time we had gotten 
another Surgeon out of the Delight , 
whom we daily exercised at his instru- 
ments in the Cockpit, and his Mate at 
making of Bandages and spreading 
of Ointment ; and Captain Blokes 
(who was always giving some fresh 
proof of Sagacity), just to try ’em 
and imitate business for ’em a little, 
ordered Red Lead, mixed with Water, 
to be thrown on two of our Fellows, and 
sent ’em down to the Hold, wheq the 
Surgeon, thinking they had really been 
wounded, went about to Dress them : 
but the Mistake being discovered, it 
was a very agreeable Diversion. 

After this we made sail to the Ma- 
rias Islands (for I feel I must be brief 


The Strange Adventures 

in this abstract of my Log, and must 
compress into a few pages the events 
of many Months), and all November 
were cruizing about Cape St. Lucas in 
quest of Prizes. Christmas we spent 
in a very dismal manner ; for a Com- 
plaint something akin to Mumps with 
Scurvy in the gums, and a touch of 
Lockjaw to boot, broke out among us, 
and eight men died. Then we engaged 
or took a very big Spaniard out of 
Manilla, 250 tons, and a very rich 
Cargo, mostly in Gold-dust and em- 
broidered Stuffs. January 10th, 1748- 
9, at anchor at Port Segura ; and 
here, to our dismal dismay, we heard 
that Peace had been proclaimed be- 
tween Spain and England, and that 
all our Privateering for the present 
was at an end. Then to Acapulco in 
Mexico, seeing if we could do some 
honest trading ; but at all the Towns 
along the Coast they looked upon us 
as little better than Pirates. But we 
felt a little comforted at the thought 
that we had already taken some 
very rich Prizes, and my own 
part of the Plunder was now over 
1500Z. January 11th, we weighed 
from Port Segura, and ran towards 
the Island of Guam. Our Steward 
missing some Pieces of Pork, we im- 
mediately searched and found the 
Thieves. One of them had been 
guilty before, and forgiven on promise 
of Amendment; but was punished 
now, lest Forbearance should en- 
courage the rest to follow this bad 
practice. Provisions being so short, 
and our run now so long, might, with- 
out great caution, have brought evil 
consequences upon us. They (the 
Thieves) were ordered to the Main- 
gear, and every man of the watch 
to give ’em a blow with the Cat-’o-nine- 
tails. On the 14th of February, in 
commemoration of the ancient English 
custom of choosing Valentines, a list 
^vas drawn up of all the Fair Ladies 
in Bristol in any way related or con- 
cerned in our Ships ; and all the Offi- 
cers were sent for to the Cabin, where 
every one drew, and drank his Valen- 
tine’s health in a cup of Punch, and 
12 1 


of Captain Dangerous . 

to a happy sight of ’em all. This was 
done to put ’em in mind of Home. 

From Guam, a Very poor place, and 
the Natives uncommonly nasty, we 
shaped our course to Ternate ; and 
about the 2d of May saw land, which 
we took for some of the Islands lying 
about the N.E. part of Celebes, but were 
satisfied soon after that we were in the 
Straits of Guiana. 18th May passed 
several Islands, and the South point 
of Gillolo. This was the time of the 
S,E. Moonsoon, which made Weather 
and Wind very uncertain. May 25th 
we fell in with a parcel of Islands to 
the Eastward of Bouton, an island 
where there is a kind of Indian King, 
very Savage and Warlike, and with a 
considerable flotilla of Galleys. We 
traded with him, and made good pro- 
fit in the way of Barter ; for these 
Savages will give Gold and Goods for 
the veriest Trumpery that was ever 
picked up at a Groat the handful at 
the hucksters’ stalls in Barbican. 
From Bouton on the 11th June, hav- 
ing well watered and provisioned, and 
taken a Native pilot on board, we 
sailed for Batavia, and on the 30th 
cast anchor in the Road there. We 
waited on his Excellency the Governor- 
General (for the States of Holland), 
and begged permission to refit our 
Ships, which was granted. Many 
strange Humors now to be seen abroad. 
Some of the crew hugging each other ; 
others blessing themselves that they 
were come to such a glorious place for 
Punch, where they could have Arrack 
for Eightpence a Gallon; for now the La- 
bour was worth more than the Liquor, 
whereas a few weeks since a Bowl of 
Punch was worth more to them than 
half the Voyage. Now we began to Ca- 
reen, going over to Horn Island, and a 
Sampan ready to heave down by, and 
take in our Guns, Carriages, &c. Sev- 
eral of our men fell ill of Fevers, as they 
said, from drinking the Water of the 
Island ; but as Captain Blokes opined, 
more from the effects of Arrack Punch 
at Eightpence a Gallon. All English 
ships are allowed by the Government 
here half a leaguer of Arrack a day 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


for ship’s use per man ; but boats are 
not suffered to bring the least thing 
off shore without being first severely 
searched. As to the town of Batavia, 
it lies in a bay full of islands, which 
so break off the Sea, that though the 
Road is very large, yet it is safe. The 
Banks of the Canals through the City 
are paved with stones as far as the 
Boom, which is shut up every night at 
nine o’clock, and guarded by Soldiers. 
All the Streets are very well built and 
inhabited ; fifteen of ’em have Canals 
just as in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, 
and from end to end they reckon fifty- 
six bridges. The vast number of 
Cocoa-nut trees in and about the City 
everywhere afford delightful and pro- 
fitable Groves. There are Hospitals, 
Spin-houses, and so forth, as in Hol- 
land, where the idle and vicious arc 
set to work, and when need arises, 
receive smart Discipline. The Chi- 
nese have also a large Sick House, 
and manage their charity so well that 
you never see a Chinaman looking 
despicable in the street. The Dutch 
Women have greater privileges in In- 
dia than in Holland, or, indeed, any- 
where else ; for on slight occasions 
they are often divorced from their 
Husbands, and share the Estate be- 
twixt ’em. A Lawyer told me at 
Batavia he had known, out of fifty-eight 
causes, all depending in the Council 
Chamber, fifty-two of them were di- 
vorces. The Governor’s Palace of 
Brick, very stately and well laid. He 
lives in as great splendour as a king ; 
he has a Train and Guards — viz. a 
Troop of Horse and a Company of 
Foot with Halberds, in liveries of yel- 
low satin adorned with silver laces and 
fringe — to attend his Coach when lie 
goes abroad. His Lady has also her 
Guards and Train. The Javanese, 
or Ancient Natives, are numerous, and 
said to be barbarous, and proud, of a 
dark color, with flat faces, thin short 
Black hair, large eyebrows and cheeks. 
The men are strong-limbed, but the 
Women small. The men have many 
Wives, and arc much given to lying 
and stealing. They arc all Pagans, 

1 


and worship Devils. The women 
tawny, sprightly, and Amorous, and 
very apt to give poison to their Hus- 
bands when they can do it cunningly. 
There are at least 10,000 Chinese who 
pay the Dutch a dollar a month for 
liberty to wear their Hair, which they 
arc not allowed to do at home since 
the Tartars conquered ’em. There 
comes hither from China fourteen or 
sixteen Junks a year, being flat-bot- 
tomed vessels. The Merchants come 
with their goods, and marvellous queer 
folks they are. I don’t think the whole 
City is as large as Bristol ; but ’tis 
much more populous. 

October 12th. We, according to 
our Owners’ orders to keep our Ships 
full-manned, whether the War contin- 
ued or not — and, oh, how we cursed 
this plaguey Peace ! — shipped here 
seventeen men that were Dutch. 
Though we looked upon our hardships 
as being now pretty well over, several 
Ran from us here that had come out 
of England with us, being straggling, 
lazy good-for-nothings, that can’t leave 
their old Trade of Deserting, though 
now they had a good sum due to each 
of ’em for Wages. Their shares for 
Plunder of course were forfeited, and 
equitably divided among those that 
stuck by us. From this to the 23d 
we continued taking in wood and water 
for our passage to the Cape of Good 
Hope ; and just before we sailed held 
a Council on board the Margins , by 
which ’twas agreed, that if any of our 
Consorts should happen to part com- 
pany, the one that arrived first was to 
stay at the Cape twenty days ; and 
then, if they didn’t find the other Ships, 
to make their utmost despatch to the 
Island of Helena ; and if not there, 
to proceed, according to Owner’s or- 
ders, to Great Britain. 

Nothing particular happened till the 
27th December, when the Marquis 
proved very Leaky, and rare work we 
had at the Pumps, they being most of 
them clicked up from long disuse. 
December 28th we came in sight of 
the Lion’s Head and Rump, being two 
Hills over the Cape Town. Saluted 


V' The Strange Adventures 

the Dutch fortress with Nine Guns, and 
got but Three for thanks ; it being 
surprising what airs these Pipe-smok- 
ing, Herring-curing, Cheese-making, 
Twenty-breeches Gentry give them- 
selves. 29th, we moored Ship, and 
sent our sick ashore. We stayed here 
until the end of February, when we 
went into Sardinia Bay to Careen ; 
for a Survey of Carpenters had re- 
ported very badly concerning the Leak. 
27th Feb. we had a good Rummage 
for Bale Goods to dispose of ashore, 
having leave of the Governor, and 
provided a Store-house where I and 
the Supercargo of the Delight took it 
by turns weekly during the sale of 
cm. 28th March came in a Portugee 
frigate with news that Five stout 
French Ships had attempted Rio Jan- 
eiro, but were repulsed, and had a 
great number of men killed, with over 
400 t^ken prisoners by the Portu- 
guese. 

April 5th we hoisted a blue Ensign, 
loosened our Fore Topsail, and fired 
a Gun as a signal for our Consorts to 
unmoor, and so fell down to Robbin 
and Penguin Islands. 

Memorandum. We buried four 
while at the Cape ; eight ran away to 
be eaten up, as we heartily hoped, by 
the Hottentots, who have a great 
gusto for White Man’s Flesh ; but re- 
ject Negroes as too strong and Aro- 
matic ; to say little of the major 
number of our Ships’ Companies get- 
ting Married to black Wenches. But 
there’s no Doctors’ Commons at Cape 
Town ; and the best way of Divorce 
is by shoving off a boat from Shore, 
and leaving your wife behind you. 
Item . — The Dutch generally send a 
Ship every year to Madagascar for 
Slaves to supply their Plantations ; for 
the said beastly Hottentots have their 
Liberty and Ease so much, that they 
cannot be brought to work, even 
though they should starve (which 
they do pretty well all the year round) 
for the lack of it. Here, too, we 
spoke with an Englishman and an 
Irishman, that had been several years 
with the famous Madagascar Pirates, 


of Captain Dangerous . 

but were now pardoned, and allowed 
to settle here. They told us that 
these Miserable Wretches, who once 
made such a Noise in the World, 
dwindled away one by one, most of 
them very poor and despicable, even 
to the Natives among whom they had 
Married. They added, that they had 
no Embarkations, only mere Canoes 
and Rowboats in Madagascar ; so 
that these Pirates (so long a terrible 
Bugbear to peaceable Merchantmen) 
are now become so inconsiderable as 
to be scarcely worth mentioning ; yet 
I do think that if care be not always 
taken after a Peace to clear all out- 
of-the-way Islands of these piratical 
Vermin, and hinder others from join- 
ing them, it may prove a Temptation 
for loose scampish Fellows to resort 
thither, and make every Creek in the 
Southern Seas a troublesome nest of 
Freebooters. 

The Cape having been so frequently 
described, I shall only add that the 
Character of the Hottentots, at which 
I have hinted, has been found to be 
too True, and that they scarce deserve 
to be reckoned of the Human Kind ; 
they are such a nasty, ill-looking, and 
worse-smelling people. Their Apparel 
is the Skins of Beasts ; their chief 
Ornament is to be very Greasy and 
Black ; so that they besmear them- 
selves with an abominable Oil, mixed 
with Tallow and Soot ; and the W omen 
twist the entrails of Beasts or Thongs 
of Hides round their legs, which re- 
semble Rolls of Tobacco. Here’s 
plenty, however, of all kinds of Flesh 
and Fowl ; there’s nothing wanting at 
the Cape of Good Hope for a good 
subsistence ; nor is there any place 
more Commodious for a Retirement 
to such as would be out of the Noise 
of the World, than the adjacent coun- 
try in the possession of the Dutch. 

Nothing of note happened till May 
1st, only that sometimes we had Thun- 
der, Lightning, Rain, and Squalls of 
Wind. On the 7th we made the 
Island of Ascension, S. Lat. 8*2. On 
the 14th at noon we found we had just 
crossed the Equator, being the eighth 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


time we had done so in our course 
round the World. We had a Dutch 
Squadron with us, who expected Con- 
voy Rates, and all manner of Civilities 
from us, though there was now Peace, 
and we wanted nothing from ’em ; but 
’tis always the way with this Grasping 
and Avaricious People. Soon too we 
observed that the Dutch ships began 
to scrape and clean their sides, paint- 
ing and polishing and beeswaxing ’em 
inside and out, bending new sails, and 
the very Mariners putting on half a 
dozen pair of new breeches apiece. 
This it is their custom to do as they 
draw near home ; so that they look as 
if newly come out of Holland. 

On the morning of the 15th July 
we made Fair Island and Foul Island, 
lying off Shetland ; and sighted two 
or three Fishing Doggers cruising off 
the Islands. Having little wind, we 
lay by, and the Inhabitants came off 
with what Provisions they had ; but 
they are very poor people, wild and 
savage, subsisting chiefly on Fish. 
When that provision fails, I have heard 
they live on Seaweed. 

We being, so to speak, in charge, 
although unwillingly, of the Dutch 
Squadron, which had been willy-nilly 
our Convoy, were compelled to put 
into a port of Holland instead of into 
a British one, as we had fondly hoped. 
On the 23d July the Dutch Commo- 
dore made a signal for seeing Land, 
and the whole fleet answered him with 
all their colors. The Pilot-boat com- 
ing off, we took two aboard, and about 
noon parted with some of our Dutch 
Consorts that were Rotterdam and 
Middleburg ships. We gave ’em a 
Huzza and a half in derision, and our 
Trumpet and Hautboy were for striking 
up the Rogue’s March ; but this was 
forbidden by the sagacious Captain 
Blokes. Some English ships now hove 
in sight, and saluted the Dutch Com- 
modore ; and afterwards ■we, though 
with an ill grace, saluted his Worship 
to welcome in sight of the land, which 
by right belongs to -the Rats (though I 
have little doubt that for all the Van- 
dykes and V andams the long-whiskered 


Gentry will come to their own again 
some of these fine days). As soon as 
they got over the Bar the Dutchmen 
fired all their guns for joy at their safe 
arrival in their own country, which 
they very affectionately call Father- 
land ; and, indeed, it w'as not easy 
under these circumstances to be angry 
with the Poor Souls that had been so 
long at Sea and wandering about 
Strange Lands. At 8 at night we 
came to an Anchor in 6-fathom water, 
about 2 miles off shore. 

On the 24th, in the morning, the 
Dutch Flag-ship weighed, in order to 
go up to the unlivering place. In the 
Afternoon Captain Blokes sent me 
ashore, and up to Amsterdam, with a 
letter for our Owners’ Agents, to ask 
how we w’ere to act and proceed from 
hence. Coming back with instructions 
from the Agent (one Mr. Vande- 
peereboom, who made me half-fuddled 
with Schiedam drinking to our pros- 
perous return ; but he was a very 
Civil Gentleman, speaking English to 
admiration, and had a monstrous pretty 
Housekeeper, with eyes as bright as 
her own Pots and Pans), by Consent 
of our Council we discharged such men 
as we had shipped at Batavia and the 
Cape, and sold the half-dozen Negroes 
we had from time to time picked up 
for about a Hundred Dollars apiece. 
But this last had to be managed by 
private Contract, and somewhat under 
the Rose ; for their High Mightinesses, 
the States-General, allow no Slaves 
to be sold openly in Amsterdam. 

On the 10th w r e w T ent up the Vlieder, 
which is a better Road than the Texel, 
and then to Amsterdam again, where 
Captain Blokes and his chief officers 
had to make Affidavits before a Notary 
Public to the truth of an Abstract of 
our Voyage, the which I had drawn 
up from the log of the Marquis , to 
justify our proceedings to our own 
Government in answer to what the 
East India Company had to allege 
against us ; they being, as we were 
informed, resolved to trouble on 
pretence that we had Encroached upon 
their Charter. On the 31st August 


180 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


comes Mr. Vandepeereboom on board 
to take Account of what Plate, Gold, 
and Pearl was in the Ship ; and on 
the 5th September he took his leave 
of us. 

But not of me ; for as I had been 
much with him ever since we had lain 
at Amsterdam, we had become great 
Chums, and he had persuaded me not 
to return just yet to England, but to 
remaiu with him in Holland, and be- 
come his partner in Mercantile Ad- 
venture, that should not necessitate 
my going to Sea again. And by this 
time, to tell truth, I was heartily sick 
of being Tossed and Tumbled about 
by the Waves. No man could say 
that I had not done my Duty during 
my momentous Voyage round the 
World. I had worked as hard as any 
Moose on board the Marquis , doing 
hand-work and head-work as well. I 
had been Wounded, had had two Fe- 
vers and one bout of Scurvy ; but was 
seldom in such evil case as to shirk 
either my Duty or my Grog. I pru- 
dently redoubted the Chances of re- 
turning in haste to my native Country, 
for, although being alone in the world, 
and the marriage with Madam Taffe- 
tas not' provable in Law, with no other 
Domestic Troubles to grieve me, I 
knew from long Experience what 
Ducks and Drakes Seafaring men do 
make of their money coming home 
from a long voyage with their heads 
empty and their pockets full, and was 
determined that what I had painfully 
gathered from the uttermost Ends of 
the Earth should not be riotously and 
unprofitably squandered in the Taverns 
of Wapping and Rotherhithe. Mr. 
Vandepeereboom entering with me 
into the State of his Aflairs, proved, 
as far as Ledger and Cash-Book could 
prove anything, that he was in a mos't 
prosperous way of business, in the 
Dutch East India trade, of which by 
this time I knew something ; so that 
although Captain Blokes was loth to 
part with his old Shipmate and Secre- 
tary, he was yet glad to see me better 
myself.' And in truth Mr. Vande- 
peercboom’s Housekeeper was marvel- 

181 


lous pretty. I drew my Pay and 
Allowances, which amounted to but a 
small matter ; but to my great Joy 
and Gladness I found that my share 
of the Plunder frqm our Prizes and 
the Ransom of Guayaquil came to 
T wenty Hundred Pounds. The order 
for this sum was duly transferred to 
me, and lodged to my Account in the 
Bank of Amsterdam, then the most 
famous Corporation of Cofferers (since 
that of Venice began to decline) in 
Europe. I bade farewell to Captain 
Blokes and all my Messmates ; left 
Twenty Pounds to be divided among 
the Ship’s Company (for which they 
manned Shrouds and gave me three 
Huzzas as the Shoreboat put off) ; 
and after a last roaring Carouse on 
board the Marquis, gave up for Ever 
my berth in the gallant Craft in which 
I had sailed round the World. 

Chapter the Twenty-first. 

OF THE SINGULAR MISFORTUNES WHICH 
BEFELL ME IN HOLLAND. 

’Twas no such very bad Title for a 
Mercantile Firm, “Vandepeereboom 
and Dangerous.” Aha, Rogues ! will 
you call me Pauper, Card-sharper, 
Led-Captain, Halfpenny- Jack, now ? 
Who but I was Mynheer Jan van 
Dangerous ? (I took my Gentility out 
of my Trunk, as the Spanish Don did 
his Sword when the Sun shone and 
there were Pistoles galore, and added 
the Van as a Prefix to which I was 
entitled by Lineage.) Who but I was 
a wealthy and prosperous Merchant of 
Amsterdam, the richest city in Hol- 
land ? Soon was I well known and 
Capped to, as one that could order 
Wine, and pay for it, at the sign of 
the Amsterdammer W appen, the great 
Inn here. 

Although ’tis now nigh thirty years 
since, I do preserve the pleasantest 
remembrance of my life in the Low 
Countries ; for, albeit hating the Dutch 
when I was Poor, I grew to like ’em 
as a reputable Merchant Adventurer. 
’Twas but a small matter prevented 
me from setting up my Carriage, and 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


was only hindered by the fact that the 
Police Laws of Amsterdam are very 
strict against Wheeled Coaches, al- 
lowing only a certain and very small 
number, lest the rumbling of the 
wheels should disturb the good thrifty 
Burghers at their Accounts. For 
most vehicles they have what they call 
a Sley, which is the body of a Coach 
fastened on to a Sledge with ropes, 
aud drawn by one Horse. A Fellow 
walks by the side on’t, and holds on 
with one hand to prevent its falling 
over, while with the other he manages 
the Reins. A most melancholy Ma- 
chine this, moving at the rate of about 
Three miles an hour, and makes you 
think that you are in a Hospital Con- 
veyance, or else going on a hurdle to 
be Hanged, Drawn, and Quartered. 

This Amsterdam is the famous 
town built upon Wooden Piles, as is 
also Petersburg, and in some order 
Venice ; and, from its Timber sup- 
ports, gave rise to the sportive saying 
of Erasmus when he first came hither, 
that he had reached a City where the 
Citizens lived, like Crows, upon the 
tops of Trees. And again he wag- 
gishly compared Amsterdam to a 
maimed Soldier, as having Wooden 
Legs. This Erasmus was, I conjec- 
ture, a kind of Schoolmaster, and very 
learned ; but conceited, as are most 
Bookish Persons. 

A Dutchman will save anything ; 
and this rich place has all come out of 
saving the Mud and starving the Fishes. 
Here Traffic is wooed as though she 
were a Woman, and Gold is put to 
bed with Time, and there is much joy 
over their Bantling, which is chris- 
tened Interest. A strange, cleanly, 
money-grubbing Country of Botanic 
Gardens and Spitting-pans, universal 
Industry and Tobacco-pipes, Ginger- 
bread and Sawing Mills, Tulip-roots 
and the Strong Waters of Schiedam, 
Cheese, Red Herrings, and the Prot- 
estant Religion. Peculiar to these 
People is the functionary called the 
Aansprecker, a kind of human Bird 
of Evil Omen, who goes about in a 
long Black Gown and a monstrous 


Cocked Hat with a Crape depending 
from it, to inform the Friends and 
Acquaintances of Genteel Persons of 
any one being Dead. This Aans- 
precker pays very handsome compli- 
ments to the Departed, at so many 
Stuyvers the Ounce of Butter; and 
this saves the Dutch (who are very 
frugal towards their Dead) from tell- 
ing Lies upon their Tombstones. 
When a Man quits, they wind up his 
Accounts, strike a Balance, and go on 
to a fresh Folio in the Ledger, without 
carrying anything forward. At Mar- 
riage-time, also, is it the custom among 
Persons of Figure for the Bride and 
Bridegroom to send round Bottles of 
Wine, generally fine Hock, well spiced 
and sugared, and adorned with all 
sorts of Ribbons. They have also a 
singular mode of airing their Linen 
and Beds, by means of what they call 
a Trokenkorb, or Fire-basket, which 
is of the size and shape of a Magpie’s 
Cage, and within it is a pan filled with 
burning Turf, and the Linen is spread 
over the Wicker-frame ; or, to air the 
Bed, the whole Machine is placed be- 
tween the Sheets. Nay, there are 
sundry Dowager Fraws who do warm 
their Legs with this same Trokenkorb, 
using it as though it were a Footstool ; 
and considering the quantity of Linsey 
Woolsey they wear, I wonder there 
are not more Fires. To guard against 
this last, there are Persons appointed 
whose olfice it is to remain all day and 
all night in the Steeples of the highest 
Churches ; and as soon as they spy a 
Flame, they hang out a Flag if it’s 
Day, or a Lantern if at Night, towards 
the quarter where the Fire is, blowing 
a Trumpet lustily meanwhile. 

Eating and Drinking here very 
good, save the Water, which is so 
Brackish that it is not drunk even by 
the Common People. There are 
W ater-Merchants constantly occupied 
in supplying the City with drinkable 
W ater, which they bring in boats from 
Utrecht and Germany in large Stone 
Bottles, that cost you about Eightpence 
a-piece English. The Poor, who can- 
not afford it, drink Rain-water, which 


182 


The Strange Adventures 

gives rise to the merry saying, that a 
Dutchman’s Mouth is forever open, 
either to swallow down Smoke or to 
drink up Rain. And indeed they are 
a wide-gaping Generation. 

Being as yet a Bachelor, I agreed 
for my Lodging and Victuals with 
Mr. Vandepeereboom, who had a fair 
House, very stately, on one of the 
Canals behind the Ileeren Gragt, or 
Lord’s Street. ’Twould have had 
quite a princely appearance, but for a 
row of Elms in front, which, with 
their fan, almost concealed the Man- 
sion. The noble look of the House, 
too, was somewhat spoilt by its being 
next door to a shop where they sold 
Drugs ; which, like all others of this 
trade in Holland, had for a sign a huge 
Carved Head, with the mouth wide 
open, in front of the window : some- 
times it rudely resembles a Mercury’s 
Head, and at other times has a Fool’s 
Cap upon it. This clumsy sign is 
called de Gaaper , — the Gaper, — and I 
know not the origin of it. Some of 
the Shop-boards they call Uithang 
Borden , and have ridiculous Verses 
written upon them ; and *tis singular 
to mark how much of the Jackpudding 
these Dutchmen, who are keener than 
Jews in their Cash-matters, have in 
them. 

Mr. Vandepeereboom was high in 
the College of Magistrates, and I was 
ofttimes privileged to witness with him 
the administration of Justice and the 
infliction of its Dread Aw r ards, — all 
here very Decent and Solemn. The 
Awful Sentence of Death is delivered 
in a room on the basement-floor of the 
Stadt House : the entrance through a 
massy folding-door covered with brass 
Emblems, such as Jove’s Beams of 
Lightning, and Flaming Swords ; 
.above, between the Rails, are the old 
and new City Arms ; and at the bot- 
tom are Death’s Heads and Bones. 
The inside of the Hall, mighty hand- 
some, in white Marble, and proper 
History pieces of the Judgment of 
Solomon, and Zelcucus the Locrian 
King tearing out one of his Eyes to 
save one of liis Son’s, and Junius Bru- 


of Captain Dangerous. 

tus putting his children to Death. On 
the fore part of the Judgment-seat a 
fine Marble Statue of Silence, gallantly, 
but quite falsely, represented by the 
figure of a Woman on the ground, her 
finger to her lips, and two Children 
by her, Weeping over a Death’s Head. 
When the dire Doom of Death is 
about to be pronounced, the Criminal 
is brought into this Hall, guarded ; 
and nothing is omitted in point of so- 
lemnity to impress on his mind (poor 
wretch!) and on those about him the 
awful consequences of violating the 
Laws of the Country : which is a 
much better mode, I think, of striking 
Terror into ’em than the French way, 
where the Magistrates settle the Sen- 
tence among themselves in private, and 
the Greflier comes all of a sudden into 
the unhappy Person’s Cell to tell him 
that he is to be presently Executed ; 
or even our Old Bailey fashion (though 
the Black Cap is frightful), where the 
Culprit is more or less sent to Hang 
like a Dog, — one down, another come 
up ; and Jack Ketch Drunk all the 
while with burnt Brandy. ’Twas a 
thorough knowledge of Human Nature, 
too, that thought of placing this Dutch 
Hall of Justice on the ground-floor, 
and its Brazen Door opening into a 
common Thoroughfare through the 
Stadt-House. I never passed by this 
door without seeing numbers of the 
Lower Orders of people gazing wist- 
fully through the Rails upon the Em- 
blematic objects within, apparently in 
Melancholy Meditation, and reflecting 
upon the Ignominious Effects of devi- 
ating from the Paths of Virtue. 

Out of the Burgomaster’s Parlor in 
the same building is a passage to the 
Execution Chamber, or Hall of the 
Last Prayers, where the Condemned 
take leave of their Priest, and pass 
through a Window, the lower part of 
Wood, so that it opens level with the 
floor of the Scaflold, which is con- 
structed on the outside, opposite the 
Waag, or Weigh House. 

As associate of one of the Magis- 
trates, I olten visited the Dungeons 
beneath the Stadt House, which are 


183 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


hermetically Sealed unto all Strangers. 
As places of Confinement, nothing can 
be more secure ; as places of punish- 
ment, nothing more Horrible. Here, 
by the faint light of a Rush Candle, 
you gaze only on Emaciated Figures, 
while out of the Dark Shadows issue 
faint but dismal Groans. Some are 
here condemned to linger for Life ; yet 
have I known convicted Creatures in 
this Rat’s hole as merry as French 
Dancing-Masters, whistling, trolling, 
and gambolling in the Dark ; while in 
the next cell were a number of W omen, 
who, like the general of their sex when 
in Durance, did nothing but Yell and 
tear their Clothes to Pieces. But ’tis 
true that all confined in these dreadful 
places had committed crimes of a very 
Malignant nature, and which heartily 
warranted their being thus cut off from 
Light and Air, and immured in Re- 
gions fit only to be Receptacles for the 
Dead. Under the Hall of Justice is 
likewise the Torture Chamber, where 
Miserable Creatures, at the bidding of 
their Barbarous Judges, undergo a 
variety of Torments ; one of which is 
to fasten the Hands behind the Neck 
with a cord through pulleys secured to 
the vaulted Ceiling, so as to be jerked 
up and down. Weights of Fifty 
Pounds each are then suspended to the 
Feet, until anguish overpowers the 
senses, and a Confession of Guilt is 
heard to quiver on the lips. Public 
Punishments are inflicted only Four 
Times a Year, when a vast Scaffold 
is erected in the space between the 
Stadt House and W aag House, as be- 
fore mentioned, Those that are only 
to be Whipped endure that compliment 
with Merciless Severity, and are not 
permitted to Retire till those who are 
to f)ie have suffered, which is either 
by Decapitation or by the Rope. And 
this acts as a Warning as to what will 
happen to ’em next time. On this 
occasion the Chief Magistrates attend 
in their Robes. But though Strict, 
they arc mighty Just in administering 
their Laws, and will not permit the 
least deviation or aggravation of the 
Sentence meted out. I did hear of 


one jocular Rogue, that was con- 
demned, for the murder of half-a-dozen 
women and children, to have his Head 
severed from the Trunk at one stroke 
of the Sword. This Mynheer Merry- 
Andrew, previous to quitting the 
Prayer Chamber, lays a Wager with 
a Friend that the Executioner should 
not be able to perform his office ac- 
cording to the exact terms of the Sen- 
tence. So, the moment he knelt to 
receive the Fatal Stroke, he rolled his 
Head in every direction so violently 
and rapidly, that the Headsman could 
not hit him with any chance of sever- 
ing his Neck at once ; and after many 
fruitless aims, was obliged to renounce 
the Task. The officers who were to 
see the Sentence executed were now in 
a Great Dilemma. In vain did they 
try by argument to persuade the Fel- 
low to remain still, and have his Head 
quietly taken ofF. At last he was re- 
manded back to Prison, and after an 
hour’s deliberation the Presiding Mag- 
istrate, upon his own Responsibility, 
ordered the Gallows to be brought 
out, and the Fellow to be straightway 
Hanged thereupon ; which was done, 
to the contentment of the Populace, 
who were howling with Rage at the 
fear of being deprived of their Sport. 
But the straight-laced Dutch Judges 
and Lawyers all took alarm, and de- 
clared that the Fellow had been mur- 
dered ; and nothing but the high rank 
and character of the Magistrate pre- 
served him from grievous conse- 
quences. 

They observe, however., degiccs in 
their Punishments, and arc, even in 
extreme cases, averse from Bloodshed, 
and willing to try aH ways with a 
criminal before Hanging or Behead- 
ing him. Thus have they their fa- 
mous Rasphuys for the Confinement 
and Correction of those whose Crimes 
are not capital. Over the Gate are 
some insignificant painted wooden 
figures, representing Rogues sawing 
Log-wood, and Justice holding a Rod 
over them ; and the like of these, 


with figures of scourging and brand- 
ing, they stick up in their Public 


The Strange Adventures 

Walks and Gardens, to show what is 
Done to those who pluck the Flowers 
or carve Names upon the Trunks of 
the Trees, and it has a most whole- 
some effect in frightening Evil-doers. 
So in the Yard of the Rasphuys is a 
Whipping-post in Tcrrorem, with an- 
other little figure of Justice flagrant 
with Execution. Here the Rogues 
saw Campeacliy-wood, which seems 
ta be most toilsome work ; and yet 
by practice they can saw Two Hun- 
dred Pounds* weight every week with 
ease, and also make many little Ar- 
ticles in Straw, Wood, Bone, and 
Copper, to sell to Visitors. They are 
all clad in White Woollen, which, 
when they are stained with the Red 
Sawdust, gives them a Hobgoblin 
kind of appearance. Here too, in a 
corner of the Yard, they show the 
Cell in which if the person who was 
confined in it did not incessantly Pump 
out the Water let into it, lie must in- 
evitably be Drowned ; but this Engine, 
the Gaolers said, had not been used 
for many Years, and was only kept 
up as an object of Terror. 

In the east quarter of Amsterdam, 
Justice is administered in its mildest 
form ; there being the Workhouse 
close to the Muider Gragt, a place 
which, I believe, has not its parallel 
in the whole World. ’Tis partly Cor- 
rectional and partly Charitable ; and 
when I saw it, there were Seven Hun- 
dred and Fifty Persons within the 
Walls, the yearly expense being about 
One Hundred Thousand Florins. In 
the rooms belonging to the Governors 
and Directresses some exquisite Paint- 
ings by Van Dyck, Rembrandt, and 
Jordaens ; and, indeed, you can go 
scarcely any where in Holland, from 
a Pig-stye to a Palace, without finding 
Paintings. Here, in a vast room very 
cleanly kept, are an immense number 
of Women occupied in Sewing and 
Spinning. Among them I saw once 
a fine hearty-looking Irishwoman, who 
had been Confined here two whole 
Years, for being a little more fond of 
true Schiedam Gin than her lawful 
Spouse. In another vast Apartment, 


of Captain Dangerous. 

secured by many Iron Railings and 
Grated Windows, are the Female 
Convicts in the highest state of Dis- 
cipline, and very industriously and 
silently engaged in making Lace, un- 
der the Superintendence of a Gover- 
ness. From the Walls of the Room 
are suspended Instruments of Punish- 
ment such as Scourges, Gags and Man- 
acles, the which are not spared upon 
the slightest appearance of Insubordi- 
nation. Then there are Wards for the 
Men ; Schoolrooms for a vast number 
of Children ; and Dormitories, all in 
the highest state of Neatness. In 
another part of the Building, which 
only the Magistrates are permitted to 
visit, are usually detained ten or a 
dozen Young Ladies — some of very 
high Families — sent here by their 
Parents or Friends for undutiful De- 
portment, or some other Domestic 
Offence. They are compelled to wear 
a particular Dress as a mark of De- 
gradation ; are kept apart ; forced to 
work a certain number of hours a 
day ; and are occasionally Whipped. 
Here, too, upon complaints of Extrav- 
agance, Tipsiness, &c., duly proved, 
can Husbands send their Wives, to 
be confined and receive the Discipline 
of the House ; and hither , too , can 
Wives send their Husbands for the same 
Cause, for Two , Three , and Four Years 
together , till they show signs of amended 
Behaviour. The food is abundant and 
good ; but the Work is hard, and the 
Stripes are many. Might not such 
a course be tried with advantage in 
England, to abate and cure the frivol- 
ties and extravagances of Fashionable 
People ? 

So then, as an Honorable Mer- 
chant in a city and country where 
Commerce is reckoned among the 
noblest of Pursuits, I might, but for 
my Perverse Fate, have grown Rich, 
and taken unto myself a Dutch Wife, 
and had a Brood of little Broad- 
beamed Children, that should smoke 
their Tobacco and quaff their Schie- 
dam, even from their Cradle upwards. 
Indeed, Madam Vanderkipperhaerin 
of Gouda (the place where the Cows 


185 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


feed in tlie Meadows clad in Blue- 
striped Jackets and Petticoats) was 
pleased to look upon me with Eyes of 
Favour, and often said it was a Sin 
and Shame that such a Proper Man 
as I (as she was good enough to say) 
was not Married and Settled. And, 
iudeed, why not? I ofttimes asked 
myself. I had Florins, Guilders, and 
Stuyvers in abundance ; my Partner 
was a Magistrate, and well reputed 
worthy : why should I not give Host- 
ages to Fortune, and have done for 
good and all with the Life of a Roving 
Bachelor ? By this time (although 
by no means forgetting my own dear 
native Tongue) I spoke French with 
Ease and Fluency, if not with Gram- 
matical correctness ; and had likewise 
an indifferently copious acquaintance 
with the Hollands Dialect. Why 
should not I be a Magistrate, a Bur- 
gomaster ? Madam Vanderkipper- 
liaerin was Rich, and had a beautiful 
Summer Villa all glistening with 
Bee’s-waxed Campeachy-wood and 
Polished Brass on the River Amstel, 
some three miles from the City. She 
had a whole Cabinet full of Ostades 
and Jan Steens in ebony frames, and 
a Side-board of Antique Plate that 
might have made Cranbourn Alley 
jealous. Why did not I avail my- 
self of the many Propitious Moments 
that offered, and demand the Hand of 
that most respectable Dutch Dame ? 

The Melancholy Truth is, that she 
chose to be jealous of Betje, Mr. 
Vandepeereboom’s comely House- 
keeper, upon whom I declare that I 
had never cast any thing but inno- 
cently Paternal Glances, and utterly 
deny that I ever foregathered with that 
young Fraw. She was for moving 
Mr. Vandepeereboom to have Bejte 
sent to the Workhouse, there to be set 
to Spinning, and to receive the usual 
unhandsome Treatment ; and when he 
refused, — having, in truth, no fault to 
find with the Poor Girl, — Madam, in 
a Iluff, withdrew her Countenance 
and Favour from me, and, with sun- 
dry of her spiteful gossips, revived the 
old Story of my having several Wives 


alive in different parts of Europe and 
the New World. Surely there was 
never yet a man so exposed to calum- 
ny as poor John Dangerous ! 

Then, to make matters worse, there 
came that sad Affair of the Beguine. 
Flesh and Blood ! a mortal man (I 
suppose) is not to be reckoned among 
the vilest of Humanity because he 
falls in Love. How could I help 
Whilhelmina van Praag being a Be- 
guiue ? Moreover, a Beguine is not 
a Nun. The Beguines belong to a 
modified kind of Monastic Order. 
They reside in a large House with a 
wall and ditch around it, and that has 
a Church and Hospital inside, and is 
for all the world like a little Town. 
But the Sisterhood is perfectly secular ; 
they mingle with the inhabitants of 
the city, quit the Convent when they 
choose, and even marry when they 
are so minded ; but they are obliged, 
so long as they belong to the Order, 
to attend Prayers a certain number of 
times a day, and to be within the Con- 
vent-walls at a stated hour every 
evening. To be admitted to this 
Order, they must be either unmarried 
or widows without children ; and the 
only certificate required of them is 
that of Good Behaviour, and that they 
have a Competence to live upon. 
You may ask, if this almost entire 
Liberty be granted them, what there 
was to hinder Mynheer Jan van 
Dangerous and the Fair Beguine 
Wilhelmina van Praag from coming 
together as Man and Wife? Wilhel- 
mina was the comeliest Creature (save 
one) that I have ever seen ; and, but 
that she was a little Stout, would have 
passed as the living model for the St. 
Catherine which Signor Raphael the 
Painter did so well in Oils. I don’t 
think I loved her ; but she took my 
Fancy immensely, and meeting her in 
the houses of divers Honourable Fami- 
lies in Amsterdam, ’tis not to be con- 
cealed that I courted her with much 
assiduity. This, by some mischief- 


making Persons, was held to be highly 
compromising to the Fair Beguine. 
For all that I had become a Grave 


The Strange Adventures 

Merchant, there was yet somewhat of 
the Gentleman of the Sword and Ad- 
venturer on the High Seas about me ; 
and a great hulking Cousin of the 
young Fraw, that was a Lieutenant 
in their High Mightinesses Land 
Forces, — the Amphibious Grenadiers 
I call ’em, and more used to Salt- 
water than Saltpetre, — must needs 
challenge me to the Duello. The laws 
against private warfare being very 
strict in Holland, we were obliged to 
make a journey into Austrian Flan- 
ders, to arrange our Difficulty ; and, 
meeting on the borders of the Duchy 
of Luxembourg, I — Well, is Jack 
Dangerous to be blamed for that he 
was, in the prime of Life, an approved 
Master of Fence ? 

The Lieutenant being dead of his 
Wounds (received in perfectly fair 
fight), the whole City of Amsterdam 
must needs cry out that I had mur- 
dered the Man ; and the Families who 
had once been eager to receive me 
turned their backs upon me. Then 
the Fair Beguine must go into a craze ; 
and, upon my word, when I heard 
how Mad she was, and how they had 
been obliged to shut her up in the 
Hospital, I could not help thinking of 
the History of my Grandmother, and 
did mistrust meeting the young Fraw 
van Praag again (for she was very 
Sweet, I believe, with the Spark that 
forced me to fight with him), for fear 
that she should Pistol me. But she 
did not ; and Recovered, to marry a 
very Wealthy Shipmaster named 
Druyckx. 

While this Ugly Business was the 
talk of all tongues (but Mr. Vande- 
peereboom clapped me on the Shoul- 
der, and bade me take my Diversion 
while he minded Business, for that all 
would Blow Over soon), I took an 
Excursion (’twas in the third year of 
my Residence here) into North Hol- 
land, to visit the famous village of 
Brock. Here the streets are divided 
by little Rivulets, for all the world 
like Lilliputian Canals ; the Houses 
and Summer-houses all of Wood, 
painted Green and White, very hand- 


of Captain Dangerous. 

some, albeit whimsical in their shape* 
and scrupulously neat. The Inhabi- 
tants have a peculiar association 
among themselves, and scarcely ever 
admit a Stranger within their Doors. 
During my stay I only saw the Faces 
of two of ’em, and then only by a 
stealthy Peep. They are said to be 
very rich, and in some of their Kitchens 
to have Pots and Pans of solid Gold. 
The shutters of the Windows always 
kept closed, and the Householders go 
to and fro by a Back Door, the Prin- 
cipal Entrance being opened only at 
Marriages and Deaths. The Street 
Pavement all set out with Pebbles and 
Cockleshells, and no Dogs or Cats 
were seen to trespass upon it ; and 
formerly there was a law to oblige all 
Passengers to take off their Shoes. 
Here it was that a Man was once 
Convened and Reprimanded for 
Sneezing in the Streets ; and, latterly, 
a Parson, I heard, upon being ap- 
pointed to fill the Church on the De- 
mise of an old Predecessor, gave 
great offence to his Flock for not tak- 
ing off his Shoes when he ascended 
the Pulpit. The Gardens of this 
strange Village produce Deer, Dogs, 
Peacocks, Chairs, and Ladders, all 
cut out in Box. I never saw such a 
Museum of vegetable Statuary in my 
Life before. On the whole, Brock 
resembles a trim, sprightly Ball-room, 
all garnished, lighted up, and the floor 
well chalked, but not a Soul to Scrape 
Fiddle or Foot Minuet. Farther from 
here is, Saardam, which, at a distance, 
looks like a City of Windmills. 

Item . — I forgot to say, that at Brock 
they tie up the Cows’ Tails with Blue 
Ribbons. 

The Houses of Saardam are prin- 
cipally built of Wood, and every one 
has a Fantastic kind of Baby Garden. 
Here is the Wooden Hut where Peter 
the Great lived, when he wrought as 
a Shipwright in the Navy-yard. It 
stands in a Garden, and is in Decent 
Preservation. The women in North 
Holland are said to be handsomer 
than in any other part of the country ; 
but I was out of taste with Beauty 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


when I came hither, and could see 
naught but ugly Faces. 

So, coming back to Amsterdam, I 
found that Mr. Vandepeereboom* s Pre- 
diction was fulfilled with a Vengeance, 
and with Compound Interest. The 
Business of the Beguine had Blown 
Over ; but another affair had Blown 
On, and this very speedily ended in a 
Blow Up. I am sorry to say that 
this Fairspoken and seemingly Repu- 
table Mr. Vandepecreboom turned out 
to be a very Great Rogue. Our Firm 
was in the Batavian trade, dealing in 
fine Spices, Nutmegs, Cloves, Mace, 
Cinnamon, and so forth ; also in Rice, 
Cotton, and Pepper ; and especially 
in the Java Coffee, which is held to be 
second only to that of Arabia. In 
this branch of Trade the Dutch have 
no competition, and they are able to 
keep the price of their Spices as high 
as they choose, by ordering what re- 
mains unsold at the price they have 
fixed upon it to be Burnt. How it 
came to pass that the Spice Ships 
consigned to us were all wrecked on 
the High Seas and never insured ; 
that the Batavian Merchants, to whom 
we advanced money on their Consign- 
ments, all failed dismally ; that every 
Speculation we entered into went 
against us, and that we always burnt 
our Surplus Goods just as prices were 
about to rise, — I know not ; but cer- 
tain it is, that I had not been three 
weeks back in Amsterdam before the 
House of Vandepeereboom and Dan- 
gerous went Bankrupt. Now ’tis an 
ugly thing to be Bankrupt in Holland. 
The people are so thrifty and perse- 
vering, and so jealous of keeping their 
Engagements, that the very rarity of 
Insolvency makes it Scandalous. A 
Trading Debtor being a character very 
seldom to be met with, he is held in 
more Odium in Holland than in any 
other part of Europe. Yet are their 
Laws of Arrest milder than with us 
in England, where for a matter of 
Forty Shillings an Honest Man be- 
comes the prey of a Catchpole, .and 
for years after he has paid the Debt 
itself, with exorbitant Costs to some 


Knavish Limb of the Law, may still 
continue to Rot in Gaol for the Keep- 
er’s Fees or Garnish. Here, if the 
Debtor be a Citizen or Registered 
Burgher (as I was), he is not subject 
to have his Person seized at the suit 
of his Creditors, until three regular 
Summonses have been duly served 
upon him to appear in the Court, which 
Processes are completed in about a 
month ; afte? which, if he does not 
obey it, he may be laid hold of, but 
only when he has quitted his House ; 
for in Holland a Man’s Dwelling is 
held even more sacred than in Eng- 
land, and no Writ or Execution what- 
ever is capable of being served upon 
him so long as he keeps close, or even 
if he stands on the threshold of his 
Home. In this Sanctuary he may 
set at Defiance every Claimant ; but 
if he have the Hardihood to appear 
Abroad, the Sergeants collar him 
forthwith. But even in this case he 
goes not to a common Gaol or Prison 
for Felons, but to a House of Restric- 
tion, where he is properly entreated, 
and maintained with Liberal Human- 
ity ; the Expense of which, as well as 
the Proceedings, must all be defrayed 
by the Creditors. This regards only 
the private Gentleman Debtor ; but 
woe betide the Fraudulent Trader ! 
The Bankrupt Laws of Holland differ 
from ours in this respect, that all the 
Creditors must sign the Debtor’s Cer- 
tificate, or Agreement of Liberation. 
If any decline, the Ground of their 
Refusal is submitted to Arbitrators, 
who decide as to the merits of the 
case ; and if the Broken Merchant 
be found to be a Cheat, no Mercy 
is shown him. The Rasphuys, the 
Pillory, nay, even the Dungeons be- 
neath the Stadt House, may be his 
Doom. 

This, Mr. Vandepeereboom (being 
a born Dutchman) knew very well; 
and he waited neither for Delibera- 
tions as to his Certificate, nor for 
Arbitrators’ award. He e’en showed 
his Creditors a clean Pair of Heels, 
and took Shipping for Harwich in 
England. 1 believe he afterw aids 


188 


The Strange Adventures 

prospered exceedingly in London as a 
Crimp, or Purveyor of Men for the 
Sea-Service, and submitted to the 
East India Compauy many notable 
plans for injuring the Commerce of the 
Hollanders. I have likewise reason 
to think that he did me a great deal 
of harm amongst my late Owners at 
Bristol and elsewhere, saying that I 
had been the Ruin of him with Waste- 
ful Extravagance and Deboshed Ways, 
and that but for his Intercession I 
should have been Broken on the 
Wheel for Unhandsome Behavior to 
the Fair Beguine. Ere he flitted, he 
left me a Letter, in which he had the 
Impudence to tell me that he had long 
since drawn out my Account from the 
Bank of Amsterdam, thinking him- 
self much better able to take care of 
the Money than I was. Futhermore 
he contemptuously advised me to try 
some other line than Commerce, fOT 
which I was, through my Former 
Career — or Vagabond Habits, as he 
had the face to call it — in no wise 
fitted. Finally, he ironically wished 
me a Good Deliverance from the 
hands of the Assessors of the Com- 
mercial Tribunal, and, with a Devilish 
Sneer, recommended his Housekeeper 
Betje to my care. O Mr. Vande- 
peereboom, Mr. Vandepeereboom ! if 
ever we meet again* old as I am, 
there shall be Weeping in Holland for 
you — if, indeed, there be anybody left 
to shed tears for such a Worthless 
Rascal. 

This most Dishonest Person, how- 
ever, did me unwittingly a trifle of 
good, and at all events saved me from 
Gyves and Stripes. That Passage of 
his in the Letter about my Funds in 
the Bank of Amsterdam was my De- 
liverance. ’Twas widely known that 
I was but a simple Seafaring Man, 
unused to Mercantile Affairs, and that 
I had really brought with me the con- 
siderable Sum of Twenty Hundred 
Pounds. I was arrested, it is true, 
and lay for many Months in the House 
of Restriction ; but interest was made 
for me, and the Creditors of the Broken 
House agreed to sign a Certificate of 


of Captain Dangerous . 

Liberation. I believe that but for 
that mournful business of the Beguine, 
and for that confounded Officer that I 
sworded, some of the Wealthy Mer- 
chants would have subscribed to an 
Association for setting me up again ; 
but that Rencounter was remembered 
to my hurt, and says Mynheer van 
Bommel, when he brought me my 
Certificate, “ Ilarkye, Friend Eng- 
lander ; you are free this time. Take 
my advice, and get you out of Holland 
as quick as 'ever you can ; for their 
High Mightinesses, to say nothing of 
the Worshipful Burgomasters of this 
City, have a misliking for Men that 
are too quick with the Sword, and too 
slow with the Pen ; and if you don’t 
speedily mend your way of Life, and 
bid farewell to this Country, you will 
find yourself sawing of Campeaehy- 
wood at the Rasphuys, with Dirk Juill, 
the Beadle, standing over you with a 
Thong.” Upon which I thanked him 
heartily ; and he had the Generosity 
to lend me Fifty Florins to furnish my 
present needs. 

I was no longer a Young Man. I 
was now long past my fortieth year, 
again almost a Pauper, Friendless and 
Unknown in the World ; yet did I 
feel Undaunted, and confident that 
Better Days were in store for me. 
Pouching my Fifty Florins, I first fol- 
lowed the Burgomaster’s advice by 
getting out of Holland as quick as 
ever I could, and betook myself by 
Treyckshuyt and Stage Wagon to the 
city of Bruxelles in Brabant. Here I 
abode for some months in the house 
of a clean Widow-woman that was a 
Walloon, who, finding that I was 
English, and besides, a very tolerable 
French Scholar, procured me several 
Pupils among the Tradesfolk in the 
neighborhood of the Petit Sablon (hard 
by the Archduchess Governante’s Pal- 
ace), where I dwelt on a Sixth Floor. 
By degrees I did so increase my num- 
ber of Pupils, that I was able to open 
a School of some thirty Lads and 
Lasses. To both indifferently I taught 
the Languages, with Writing and Ac- 
compts ; while for the instruction of 


189 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


the latter in Needlework and other 
Feminine Aceomplishments I engaged 
my Landlady’s Daughter, a comely 
Maiden, albeit Red-haired, and very 
much pitted with the Small-pox. Fig- 
ure to yourself Captain Jack Dangerous 
turned Dominie ! I am venturesome 
enough to believe that I was a very 
passable Pedagogue ; and of this I am 
certain, that 1 was entirely beloved by 
my Scholars. The sufferings I had 
undergone while a Captive in the 
hands of that Barbarous Wretch, 
Gnawbit, had never been effaced from 
my Memory, and had made me in- 
finitely tender towards little Children. 
Indeed I could scarcely bear to use 
the Ferula to them, or nip ’em with a 
Fescue, much less to untruss and 
Scourge ’em, as ’tis the brutal fashion 
of Pedants to do ; nor do I think, 
though I disobeyed Solomon’s maxim, 
and Spared the Rod, that I did much 
towards Spoiling any Child that was 
under my care. I made Learning 
easy and pleasant to my Youngsters, 
by telling them all sorts of moving 
and marvellous Stories, drawn from 
what Books of History I had handy 
(and these I admit I Colored a little, 
to suit the Imaginations of the Young), 
and others concerning my own re- 
markable Adventures, in which, how- 
ever extraordinary they seemed, I 
always took care to adhere strictly 
to the Truth, only suppressing that 
which it was not proper for Youth 
and Innocence to be made acquainted 
with. 

But Schoolkeeping is a tiresome 
trade. One cannot be at it day and 
night too ; and a Man must have some 
place to Divert himself in, when the 
toils of the day are over. I fouud out 
a Coffee-House in the Rue de Merinos, 
or Spaan Schecp Straet, as the Flem- 
ings call it, in strange likelihood to our 
tongue, and there, over my Tobacco, 
made some strange Acquaintance. 
There was one De Suaso, an Empiric, 
that had writ against the English Col- 
lege of Physicians, and was like to 
have made a Fortune by his famous 
Nostrum for the Gout, the Sudorific 


Expulsive Mixture; but that Scheme 
had fallen through, it having been dis- 
covered that the Mixture was naught 
but Quicksilver and Ilogslard, which 
made the Patients perspire indeed, 
but turned ’em all, to the very Silver 
in their Pockets, as Black as Small- 
Coal Men. Now, he had become a 
kind of Pedlar, selling Handkerchiefs 
made at Amsterdam, in imitation of 
those at Naples, with Women’s Gloves, 
Fans, Essences, and Pomatums — and 
in fact all the Whim-Whams that are 
known in the Italian trade as Galan - 
terie le piu curiose di Venezia e di 
Milano. But his prime trade was in 
Selling of Snuff, for the choicer sorts 
of which there was at that time a 
perfect Rage among the Quality, both 
of the Continent aud of England. 
This De Suaso used to Laugh, and 
say that the best venture he had ever 
made was from a Parcel of Snuff so 
bad and rotten, that he was about to 
send it back to the Hamburg Mer- 
chant who had sold it to him, when 
one day, plying at the chief Coffee- 
House, as w r as his wont, my Lord Ilaut- 
goustham, an English Nobleman, de- 
sired him to fill his box with the 
choicest Snuff he had. Thinking my 
Lord really a Judge, he gives him 
some uudeniable Bouquet Dauphinc ; 
but the Peer would have none of it. 
Then he tries him with one Mixture 
after another, but always unsuccess- 
fully; until at last he bethinks him 
of the Musty Parcel he has at home, 
and accordingly, having fetched some 
of that, returns to the Coffee-House, 
and says that he has indeed a Snuff 
of extraordinary Smell and Taste, but 
that ’tis extravagantly dear. Lord 
Hautgoustham tries it, and calls out in 
an ecstacy that ’tis the most beautiful 
Snuff he ever put to his Nose. He 
bought a Pound of it, for which De 
Suaso charged him at the moderate 
rate of Four Guineas ; and desires to 
know his Lodging, that he may send 
his Friends to buy some of this In- 
comparable Mixture. The Artful 
Rogue then affects the Coy, says that 
his Stock of the Snuff is very low, 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


and by degrees raises his price to 
Eleven Pistoles a Pound, until the 
English in Brussels have been half- 
poisoned with his filthy Remnant ; 
when there comes upon the scene a 
certain Mr. Dubiggin, a rich old Eng- 
lish Merchant of the Caraccas, who 
knew all kinds of Snuff as well as a 
Yorkshire Tyke knows Horses ; and 
he, telling the Nobleman and his 
Friends how they have been duped, 
my Lord Hautgoustham, who was of 
a hot Temper, makes no more ado, 
but kicks this unhappy De Suaso 
half way down the Montagne de la 
Cour. 

Here, too, I made an Acquaintance 
w r ho was afterwards the means of 
working me much Mischief. This 
was one Ferdinaudo Carolyi, that said 
he was a Styrian, but spoke most 
Tongues, and was a thoroughly ac- 
complished Rascal. He had been a 
painter of Flower-pieces, and from 
what I could learn had also made the 
Mill to go in the way of coining False 
Money ; but at the time I knew him 
was all for the occult Science called 
the Cabala. He showed me a whole 
chestful of Writings at his Lodgings 
— which were very mean — and de- 
clared that lie had invented a perfect 
and particular System, which he called 
the Astronomical Terrestrial Cabala, 
lie had run through the whole Penta- 
teuch, and had reduced to the Signs 
of the Zodiac the words of such Scrip- 
ture Verses as answered to the same ; 
one to Aries, the second to Taurus, 
the third to Gemini, and the like. In 
short, there appeared a kind of Har- 
mony in ’em, particularly -when the 
Terrestrial Cabala (which was of the 
Dryest) was moistened with a flask 
or two of good old Rhenish. The 
Avhole of this contrivance was to tend 
towards the Discovery of the Philoso- 
pher’s Stone. He pretended by these 
Astronomical Figures to have pene- 
trated into the most essential Arcana 
of Nature, and all the necessary 
operations for attaining the Elixir 
Philosophorum , or some such word. 
But this Carolyi had such a winning 

191 


Way with him, that he w r ould w r ell- 
nigh have talked a Donkey’s Hind-leg 
off. He began to tell me about Peter 
of Lombardy and the great adept 
Zacharias, and of the blessed Terra 
Foliata, or Land of Leaves, where 
Gold is sown to be radically Dissolved 
in order to its Putrefaction and Re- 
germination in a Fixation which has 
Power over its Brethren the Imperfect 
Metals, and makes them like unto it- 
self ; and this process (which I believe 
to have been only a story about a 
Cock and a Bull) he called Rc-incru- 
dation. In fact my Gentleman almost 
talked me out of my Senses ; and as I 
thought him a monstrous clever Man, 
I lent him (although my Purse was as 
lean as might be) half-a-score Aus- 
trian Ducats, to carry out his experi- 
ments in the Universal Menstruum. 
Alas ! I never saw my Ducats nor 
my Alchemist again. A week after 
I had lent him the money, he fled on 
a suspicion of Base Coin ; and I had 
hard work to persuade the Officers of 
Justice that I had not a hand in his 
Malpractices. As it was, nearly all 
my Scholars fell away from my School ; 
and the Impudent Flemings sneered 
at me as Mozzoo Kabala , — in their 
barbarous Lingo, — and I was pointed 
out in the streets as a Wizard, a For- 
tune-teller, a Cunning Man, and what 
not. So that I was fain, after about 
ten years’ sojourn at Bruxelles, to call 
in my Dues, gather my few Effects 
together, and bid farewell to Flanders. 
It was time ; for the Priests were up 
in arms against me as a Heretic Out- 
law, dealing in Magic. The Black 
Gentry are hereabouts very Bigoted ; 
and although they have no Inquisition, 
would, I doubt not, have led me a 
sorry Life, but for my Discretion in 
timely Flitting. 

Chapter tiie Twenty-second. 

OF A STRANGE AND HORRIBLE ADVEN- 
TURE I HAD IN PARIS, WHICH WAS 

NEARLY MY UNDOING. 

The Manner of its Coming About 
was this. I arrived in Paris very 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


Poor and Miserable, and was for some 
days (when that which I brought with 
me was spent) almost destitute of 
Bread. At last, hearing that some 
Odd Hands were wanted at the Opera- 
House to caper about in a new Ballet 
upon the Story of Orpheus, the Master 
of the Tavern where I Lodged, who 
had been a Property-Master at the 
Theatres, and entertained many of the 
Playing Gentry, made interest for me, 
as much to keep me from Starving as 
to put me in the way of earning 
enough money to pay my Score to 
him. For I have found that there 
never was in this world a man so Poor 
but he could manage to run into 
Debt. In virtue of his Influence, I, 
who had never so much as stood up in 
a polite Minuet in my life, and knew 
no more of Dancing than sufficed to 
foot it on a Shuffle-board at a Tavern 
to the tune of Green Sleeves, was en- 
gaged at the wages of one Livre ten 
Sols a night to be a Mime in this same 
Ballet. But ’twas little proficiency in 
Dancing they wanted from me. One 
need not have been bound ’prentice to 
a Hackney Caper-Merchant to play 
one of the Furies that hold back Eury- 
dice, and vomit Flames through a 
Great Mask. They gave me a mon- 
strous Dress, akin to the San Benitos 
which are worn by the poor wretches 
who are burnt by the Inquisition ; and 
my flame-burning was done by an In- 
genious Mechanical Contrivance, that 
had a most delectable effect, albeit the 
Fumes of the Sulphur half-choked me. 
And they did not ask for any Charac- 
ters for their Furies. I tumbled and 
vomited Flames for at least thirty 
nights, when one evening, standing at 
the Side-Scenes waiting for my turn 
to come on, it chanced that the light 
gauzy Coats of a pretty little Dancing- 
girl, that was playing a Dryad in the 
Wood where Orpheus charms the 
Beast, caught Fire. I think ’twas the 
Candle fell out of the Moon-box, and 
so on to her Drapery ; but, at all 
events, she was Alight, and ran about 
the Scene, screaming piteously. The 
poor little cowardly wretches her 


Companions all ran away in sheer ter- 
ror ; and as for* the two Musqueteers 
of the Guard who stood sentry at each 
side of the Proscenium, one dastard 
Losel fell on his Marrow-bones and 
began bawling for his Saints, whilst 
the other, a more active Craven, drops 
his musket and bayonet with a clang, 
and clambers into the Orchestra, hit- 
ting out right and left among the Fid- 
dlers, and very nearly tumbling into 
the Big Drum. All this took much 
less time to pass than I have taken to 
relate ; but as quick as thought I 
rushed on to the Stage, seized hold of 
the little Dancing-girl, tripped her up, 
and rolled her over and over on the 
Boards, I encompassing her, till the 
flames were Extinguished. Luckily 
there was no Harm done. She was 
Bruised all over, and one of her pretty 
little Elbows was scratched ; but that 
was all. One of the Gentlemen of the 
King’s Chamber came round from his 
Box ; and the Sardinian Ambassador 
sends round at once a Purse of Fifty 
Pistoles, and an offer for her to become 
his Madam ; “ For I should like one,” 
his Excellency said, u that had been 
half-roasted. All these Frenchwomen 
look as though they had been boiled.” 
When the Little Girl was brought to 
her Dressing-room, and had somewhat 
recovered from her Fright, she began 
to thank me, her Preserver, as she 
called me, with great Fervor and Ve- 
hemence ; yet did I fancy that, al- 
though her words were excellently well 
chosen, she spoke with somewhat of 
an English Accent. And indeed she 
proved to be English. She was the 
Daughter of one Mr. Lovell, an Eng- 
lish Gentleman of very fair extraction, 
who had been unfortunately mixed up 
in the Troubles of the Forty-five ; and 
having been rather a dangerous Plot- 
ter, and so excepted from the Art of 
Oblivion, had been fain to reside in 
Paris ever since, picking up a Crust 
as he could by translating, teaching 
of the Theorbo and Harpsichord, and 
such-like sorry Shifts. But he was 
very well connected, and had powerful 
friends among the French Quality. 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


He was now a very old man, but of a 
most Genteel Presence and Majestic 
Carriage. The Little Girl’s name — 
she was now about Eighteen years 
old — was Lilias, and she was the only 
one. As she had a marvellous turn 
for Dancing, old Mr. Lovell had (in 
the stress of his Affairs) allowed her 
to be hired at the Opera House, where 
she received no less than a Hundred 
Ecus a month ; but he knew too well 
what mettle Gentlemen of the King’s 
Chamber and Musqueteers of the 
Guard were made of ; and every night 
after the Performance he came down 
to the Theatre to fetch her — his Hat 
fiercely cocked, and liis long Sword 
under his arm. So that none dared 
follow or molest her. And I question 
even, if he had heard of the Ambassa- 
dor’s offer, whether the old Gentleman 
would not have demanded Satisfaction 
from his Excellency for that slight. 

When I discovered that this dear 
little Creature, who was as fair as her 
name and as good as gold, was my 
Countrywoman, I made bold to tell 
her that I was English too ; whereupon 
she Laughed, and in her sweet manner 
expressed her wonder that I had come 
to be playing a Fury at the French 
Opera House. I chose to keep my 
Belongings private for the nonce ; so 
the old Gentleman, treating me as an 
honest fellow of Low Degree, presented 
me with ten Livres, which I accepted, 
nothing loth, and the Theatre People 
even made a purse for me amounting 
to Fifty more. So that I got as rich 
as a Jew, and was much in favor 
with my Landlord. But, better than 
all, the Little Girl, as I was her Pre- 
server, insisted that I should be her 
Protector too ; and old Mr. Lovell 
being laid up very bad with the rheu- 
matism, I was often privileged to at- 
tend her home after the Theatre, walk- 
ing respectfully a couple of paces be- 
hind her, and grasping a stout Cudgel. 
Father and Daughter lived in the 
Impasse Mauvaise Langue, Rue des 
Moineaux, behind St. Rogue’s Church ; 
and often when I had got my precious 
charge home, she would press me to 
13 P 


stop to supper, the which I took very 
humbly at a side table, and listened to 
the stories of old Mr. Lovell (who 
was very garrulous) about the Forty- 
five. “ Bless his old heart,” thought 
I ; “ I could tell him something about 
the Forty-five that would astonish 
him.” 

’Twas one night after leaving the 
Impasse Mauvaise Langue that, feel- 
ing both cold aud dry, I turned into a 
Tavern that was open late, for a 
measure of Hot Spiced Wine, as a 
Night-cap. There was no one there, 
beyond the People of the House, save 
a man in a Drugget Coat, a green 
velveteen W aistcoat, red plush Nethers, 
and a flapped Hat, all very Worn and 
Greasy. He was about my own age, 
and wore his own Hair ; but the most 
remarkable thing about him was his 
Face. I never saw such a Red Face. 
’Twas a hundred times more fiery than 
that of Bardolph in the Play. ’Twas 
more glowing than a Salamander’s. 
’Twas redder than Sir Robert Wal- 
pole’s (the great Whig Minister who, 
in my youth, was called by the Com- 
mon “Brandy-faced Bob!”). This 
man’s Face was most terribly puffed 
and swollen, and the Veins all injected 
with purplish Blood. The tips of his 
Ears were like two pendant Carbun- 
cles. His little bloodshot Eyes seemed 
starting from their Sockets, while the 
Cheeks beneath puffed out like Pillows 
for his Orbits to rest upon. Not less 
worthy of remark was it that this Red- 
faced Man’s Lips were of a tawny 
White. He was forever scrabbling 
with his hands among his tufted Locks, 
and pressing them to his Temples, as 
though his head pained Him — which 
there was reason to believe it did. 

This strange Person was, when I 
entered the Wine-shop, in hot Dispute 
with the Master about some trifling 
Liquor Score. He would not Pay, he 
said ; no, not he. He had been basely 
Robbed and Swindled. lie had plenty 
of Money, but he would not disburse 
a Red Liard. He 'showed, indeed, a 
Leathern Purse with two or three 
Gold Pieces in it, and smaller Money ; 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


but declared that he would Die sooner 
than disburse. And as he said this, 
he drew out of his pocket a long Clasp- 
Knife, two-bladed ; and opening it, 
brandished it about, and said they had 
better let him go, or Worse would 
come of it. 

The Master of the Tavern aud his 
Wife, decent bodies both, were wofutly 
frightened at the behavior of this Des- 
perado ; but I was not to be fright- 
ened by such Racketing. I bade him 
put up his Toothpick, giving him at 
the same time a Back-Hander, which 
drove him into a Corner, where he 
crouched, snarling like a Wild-beast, 
but offering to do me no hurt. Then 
I asked what the To-do was about, 
and was told that lie stood indebted 
but for Eight Sols, for Haifa Litre 
of Wine, and that they could not ac- 
count for his Fury. The Man was 
evidently not in Liquor, which was 
strange. 

These good people were so flustered 
at the Man’s uncommon Demeanour, 
that, seeing I was Strong and Valiaut, 
they begged me to take him away. 
This I did, first discharging his 
Reckoning ; for as he had Money 
about him, I doubted not but that ho 
would recoup me. I got him into the 
Street (which was close to the Market 
of the Innocents, and I lived in the 
Street of the Ancient Comedy, t’other 
side of the River), and asked him 
where he was going. 

“ To get a Billet of Confession,” 
be made answer. 

“ Stuff and Nonsense ! ” I answered, 
in the French Tongue. “ They sell 
them not at this Hour of Night. 
Where do you live ? ” 

“In the Parvis of Notre Dame,” 
says he, staring like a Stuck Pig. “ 6 
Arnault ! O Jansenius ! O Monsieur 
de Paris ! all this is your fault I ” 

And he lugs out of his Pocket a 
ragged Sheet of Paper, which he said 
was the last Mandemeut or Charge of 
the Archbishop of Paris, and was for 
reading it to me* by the Moonlight ; 
Vmt I stopped hint short. I had heard 
i- . ''Hgua manner that the Public 


Mind was just then much agitated by 
some Dispute between the Clergy and 
the Parliament concerning Billets or 
Certificates of Confession ; but they 
concerned,, neither me nor the Opera 
House. Besides, an Hour after Mid- 
night is not the time for reading 
Archbishops’ Charges in the Public 
Streets. 

“ Tis my belief, Brother,” I said, 
as soothingly as I could, “ that you’d 
better go Home, and tie a Wet Clout 
round you Head ; or, better still, hie 
to a Chirurgeon and be let Blood. 
Have you e’er a Home ? ” 

He began to tell me that his Name 
was Robert Francois Damiens ; that 
lie had come from Picardy ; that he 
had been a Stableman, a Locksmith, 
a Camp-follower, and a Servant at the 
College of Louis-le-Grand ; that he 
had a Wife who was a Cook in a 
Noble Family, and a Daughter who 
coloured Prints for a Seller of En- 
gravings. In short, he told me all 
save what I desired to know. And 
in the midst of his rambling recital 
he stops, and claps his Hand to his 
Forehead again. 

“ What ails you ? ” I asked. 

“ G'cst le Sang , c’est le Sang qui me 
monte a la Tete ! ” cries he. “ La 
Faute est a Monseigneur et a son Man - 
dement. Je perirai ; mais les Grands 
de la Terre periront avec moi.” 

And with this Bedlamite Speech he 
broke away from me, — for I had kept 
a slight hold of him, — and set off 
Running as hard as his legs could 
carry him. 

I concluded that thi^ Red-faced 
Man must be some Mad Fellow just 
escaped out of Charenton ; and, having 
other Fish to fry, let him follow his 
own devices. Whereupou I kindled 
a Pipe of Tobacco, and went home to 
Bed. 

Two days after this (March 1757), 
the whole Troop of the Opera House 
were commanded to Versailles, there 
to perform the Ballet of Orpheus be- 
fore Mcsdamcs the King’s Daughters. 

I had by this time received slight Pro- 
motion, and played the Dog Cerberus, 


1 The Strange Adventures 

— at which my dear little Angel of a 
Lilias made much mirth. His Majes- 
ty was to have waited at Versailles 
for the playing of the Piece ; but after 
Dinner he changes his mind, and de- 
termines on returning to his other 
Palace of Trianon. 

’Twas about Five o’clock in the 
Afternoon, and there was a great 
Crowd in the Court of Marble to see 
the Most Christian King take Coach 
for Trianon. The Great Court was 
full of Gardes Francaises, Musque- 
teers Red and Gray carrying Torches, 
with Coaches, Led Horses, Prickers, 
Grooms, Pages, Valets, Waiting 
Women, and all the Hurley-Burly of 
a great Court. Some few of the 
Commonalty also managed to squeeze 
themselves in — amongst others, your 
humble Servant, John Dangerous, 
who was now reckoned no better than 
a Rascal Buffoon. 

’Twas bitterly cold, and freezing 
hard, and the Courtiers had their 
hands squeezed into great fur Muffs. 

I saw the King come down the Marble 
Staircase ; a fair portly Gentleman, 
with a Greatcoat, lined with fur, over 
his ordinary vestments — then a novelty 
among the French, and called a Red - 
ingote , from our English Riding-coat. 

“ Is that the King ? ” I heard a 
Voice, which I seemed to remember, 
ask behind me, as the Monarch passed 
between a double line of Spectators 
to his Coach. 

“ Yes, Dog,” answered he who had 
been addressed, and who was an 
Officer in the Gray Musqueteers. 

“ Pig, why dost thou not take off thy 
Hat?” 

I was all at once pushed violently 
on one side. A man with a Drugget 
Coat and Flapped Hat, and whom I 
at once recognized by the light of the 
glaring torches as the Red-faced 
Brawler of the Wine-shop, darted 
through the line of Guards, an open 
Knife in his hand, and rushing up to 
him, stabbed King Lewis the Fifteenth 
in the side. 

I could hear his Majesty cry out, 


of Captain Dangerous. 

u Oh ! je suis hlesse / ’* — u I am 
wounded ! ” — but all the rest was tur- 
bulence and confusion ; in the midst of 
which, not caring that the Red-faced 
Man should claim me as an Acquain- 
tance, I slipped away. I need scarcely 
say that there was no Ballet at Ver- 
sailles that night. 

A great deal of Blood came from 
the King’s Wound; for he was a 
Plethoric Sovereign, much given to 
High Living; but he was, on the 
whole, more Frightened than Hurt. 
Although when the Assassin was first 
laid hold of, His Majesty cried out in 
an Easy Manner that no Harm was 
to be done him, he never afterwards 
troubled his Royal Self in the slightest 
Manner to put a stop to the Hellish 
Torments inflicted on a Poor Wretch, 
who had, at the most, but scratched 
his Flesh, and for whom the most fit- 
ting Punishment would have been a 
Cell in a Madhouse. 

As for this most miserable Red- 
faced Man, Robert Francois Damiens, 
this is what was done to him. At 
first handling, he was very nearly 
murdered by the Young Gentlemen 
Officers of the Body Guard, who, 
having tied him to a Bench, pricked 
him with their Sword Points, beat 
him with their Belts, and pummelled 
him about the Mouth with the Butt- 
ends of Pistols. Then he was had to 
the Civil Prison ; and a certain Presi- 
dent, named Machault, came to in- 
terrogate him, who being most zealous 
to discover whether the Parricide (as 
he was called) had any Accomplices, 
heated a Pair of Pincers in the Fire, 
and when they were red-hot, clawed 
and dragged away at the Unhappy 
Man’s Legs, till the whole Dungeon 
did reek with the horrible Odour of 
Burnt Flesh. Just imagine one of 
our English Judges of the Land un- 
dertaking such a Hangman’s Office ! 
The poor wretch made no other com- 
plaint than to murmur that the King 
had directed that he was not to be ill- 
treated ; and when they further ques- 
tioned him, could only stammer out 


195 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


some Incoherent Balderdash about the 
Archbishop, the Parliament, and the 
Billets of Confession. 

After many days, he was removed 
from Versailles to Paris; but his Legs 
were so bad with the Burning, that 
they were obliged to carry him away 
on a Mattress. So to Paris ; the 
Journey taking Six Hours, through 
his great attendance of Guards and 
the thickness of the Crowd. He was 
had to the Prison of the Conciergcrie, 
and put into a Circular Dungeon in 
the Tower called of Montgomery— 
the very same one where Ravaillac, 
that killed Henry the Fourth, had 
formerly lain. There they put him 
into a kind of Sack of Shamoy 
Leather, leaving only his Head free ; 
and he was tied down to his bed— which 
was a common Hospital Pallet — by an 
immense number of Leathern Straps, 
secured by Iron Rings to the Floor of 
his Dungeon. But what Dr. Gold- 
smith, the Poetry-Writef, means by 
“ Damiens’ Bed of Steel,” I’m sure I 
don’t know. At the head and foot of 
his Bed an Exempt kept watch Night 
and Day, and every three-quarters of 
an hour the Guard Was relieved ; so 
that the Miserable Creature had little 
Chance of Sleeping. He would have 
sunk under all this Cruelty ; but that 
they kept him up with Rich Meats 
and Generous Wines, which they, had 
all but to force down his Throat. 

But while all this was being done 
to Damiens, other steps were being 
taken by Justice, the which narrowly 
concerned me. As he would denounce 
no Accomplices, real ot imaginary, 
the Police did their best to find out 
his Confederates for themselves, and 
by diligent Inquiry made themselves 
acquainted with all Damiens’ move- 
ments for days before he committed 
his Crime. They found out the 
Wine-shop where he had refused to 
pay his Reckoning and made a Dis- 
turbance ; and learning from the 
people of the House what manner of 
Man had paid for him, and taken him 
away, they were soon on mg track. 
One night, just before the Ballet began, I 


196 


was taken by two Exempts; and, in 
the very play-acting dress as Cerberus 
that I wore, was forced into a Sedan, 
and taken, surrounded dby Guards, to 
the Prison of the Chatelet. I thought 
of appealing to our Ambassador in 
Paris, and proving that I was a faith- 
ful Subject of King George ; but, as 
it happened, I owed my safety to one 
who disowned that Monarch, and kept 
all his Allegiance for King James. 
For .old Mr. Lovell, hearing of my 
Arrest, and importuned by poor Pretty 
Miss Lilias, who was kind enough to 
shed many Tears on the occasion, 
hurried off to his Eminence the Car- 
dinal de , who was all but 

supreme at Court, and with whom he 
had great Influence. The Cardinal 
listens to him very graciously, and by 
and by comes down the President Pas- 
quier to interrogate me, to whom I 
told a plaiu Tale, setting forth how I 
had been unfortunate in Business in 
Holland and Flanders, and was earn- 
ing an honest Livelihood by playing a 
Dog in a Pantomime. The people in 
the Wine-shop could not but bear me 
out in stating that I had come across 
the Red-faced Man by pure Accident, 
and was no Friend of his. It was 
moreover established by the Police, 
that I had not been seen in Damiens’ 
company after the Night I first met 
him, and that I had a legitimate call 
to be at Versailles on the day of the 
Assassination ; so that after about a 
fortnight’s detention I was set at 
Liberty, to my own great joy and that 
of my good and kind Mistress Lilias, 
who had now repaid ten-thousand-fold 
whatever paltry Service I had been 
fortunate enough to render her. Nay, 
this seeming Misadventure was of 
present service to me; for his Emi- 
nence was pleased to say that he 
should be glad to hear something more 
concerning me, for that I seemed a 
Bold Fellow ; and at an Interview 
with him, which lasted more than an 
Hour, I told him my whole Life and 
Adventures, which caused him to 
elevate his Eyebrows not a little. 

Cospctto ! Signor Dangerous,” 


The Strange Adventures of Caftain Dangerous. 


says he (for though he spoke Freneh 
like a Native he was by Birth an 
Italian, aud sometimes swore^in that 
Language), u if all be true what you 
say, — and you do not look like a Man 
who tells Lies, — you have led a 
strange Life. When a Boy, you were 
nearly Hanged ; and now at the mezzo 
cammin of Life you have been on the 
point of having your Limbs broken 
on a St. Andrew’s Cross. However, 
we must see what we can do for you. 
Strength, Valour, Experience, and 
Discretion do not often go together ; 
but I give you credit for possessing a 
fair show of all Four. I suppose, 
now, that you are tired of squatting 
at the Wicket of the Infernal Regions 
at the Opera House ? ” 

I bowed in acknowlment of his 
Eminence’s compliments, and said 
that I slionld be glad of any Employ- 
ment. 

“ Well, well,” continued his Emi- 
nence, “ we will see. At present, as 
you say you are a fair Scholar, my 
Secretary will find you some work in 
copying Letters. And here, Signor 
Dangerous, take these ten Louis, 
and furnish yourself with some more 
Clerkly Attire than your present trim. 
It would never do for a Prince of the 
Church to have a Flavour of the Opera 
Side-Scenes about his house.” 

Unless Rumour lied, there hung 
sometimes about his Eminence’s 
sumptuous hotel a Flavour, not alone 
of the Opera Side-Scenes, but of the 
Ballet-Dancers’ Tiring-room. How- 
ever, let that pass. I took the ten 
Louis with many Thanks, and six 
hours afterwards was strutting about 
in a suit of Black, full trimmed, with 
a little short Cloak, for all the world 
like a Notary’s Clerk. 

I had been in the Employ of his 
Eminence — who showed me daily 
more and more favour — about a 
month, when all Paris was agog with 
the News that the Monster Parricide 
and Hell-Hound (as they called him 
from the Pulpit), Robert Francois 
Damiens, was to suffer the last Penalty 
Of his Crime. I know not what 


strange horrible fascination I yielded 
to, but I could not resist the desire to 
see the End of the Red-faced Man. I 
went. The Tragedy took place on 
the Place de Greve ; but ere he came 
on to his last Scene, Damiens had 
gone through other Woes well-nigh 
unutterable. I speak not of his per- 
forming the amende honorable , bare- 
footed, in his Shirt, a Halter round 
his Neck, and a lighted Taper of six 
pounds’ weight in his Hand, at the 
Church-door, confessing his Crime, 
and asking Pardon of God, the King, 
and all Christian Men. Ah ! no ; he 
had suffered more than this. Part of 
his Sentence was that, prior to Exe- 
cution, he was to undergo the Question 
Ordinary and Extraordinary ; and so 
at the Conciergerie, in the presence of 
Presidents, Counsellors of the Parlia- 
ment, Great Noblemen of the Court, and 
other Dignitaries, the poor Thing was 
put into the Brodequins , or Boots, and 
wedge after wedge driven in between 
his Legs — already raw and inflamed 
with the Devilries of the President 
Macliault — and the Iron Incasement. 
He rent the air with his Screams, 
until the Surgeons declared that he 
could hold out no longer. But he 
confessed nothing ; for what had he to 
confess ? 

Then came the last awful Day, 
when all this Agony was to end. I 
saw it all. The Greve was densely 
packed ; and although the space is not 
a third so large as Tower Hill, there 
seemed to be Thousands more persons 
present than at the beheading of my 
Lord Lovat. A sorrier Sight was it 
to see the windows of the Hotel de 
Ville thronged with Great Ladies of 
the Court, many of them Young and 
Beautiful, and all bravely Dressed, 
who laughed and chattered and ate 
Sweetmeats while the Terrible Show 
was going on. The Sentence ran that 
the Assassin’s Hand, holding the Knife 
which he had used, should be Burnt 
in a Slow-fire of Sulphur. Then that 
his Flesh should be torn on the Breast, 
Arms, Stomach, Thighs, and Calves 
of the Legs with Pincers ; aud then 


The Strange Adventure 9 of Captain Dangerous. 


that into the gaping Wounds there 
should be poured Melted Lead, Rosin, 
Pitch, Wax, and Boiling Oil. And 
finally, that by the Four Extremities 
he should be attached to Four Horses, 
and rent Asunder ; his Body then to 
be Burnt, and his Ashes scattered to 
the Winds. There was nothing said 
about the Lord having mercy upon his 
Soul ; but careful injunction was made 
that he was to be condemned in the 
Costs of the Prosecution. 

All this was done, although I sicken 
to record it, but in the most Blunder- 
ing Butcherly manner. The Chief- 
Executioner of the Parliament was 
Sick, and so the task was deputed to 
liis Nephew, Gabriel Sanson, who be- 
ing, notwithstanding his Sanguinary 
Office (which is hereditary), a Hu- 
mane kind of Young Man, was all in 
a Shiver at what he had to perform, 
and quite lost his Head. Both his 
Yalets, or Under-Hangmen, were 
Drunk. They had forgotten the 
Pitch, Oil, Rosin, and other things ; 
and at the last moment they had to be 
sent for to the neighboring Grocers’. 
But these Shopkeepers declared, out 
of humanity, that they had them not ; 
whereupon Guards and Exempts were 
sent, who searched their Stores, and 
seized what was wanted in the King’s 
Name. Then the Fiendish Show be- 
gan. I can hear the miserable man’s 
Shrieks as I sit writing this now. — 
But no more. 

So strong is our Human Frame, that 
the great strong Brewers’ Horses, al- 
though Dragged and Whipped this 
way and t’other, could not pull his 
limbs Asunder. So the Surgeons 
were obliged to sever the great Sinews 
with Knives, and then the Horses 
managed it, somehow. 

Note. — When the Horses were 
Lashed, to make ’em pull Lustily, the 
Fine Ladies at the windows fluttered 
their Fans, and, in their sweet little 
Court Lingo, cried out compassion- 
ately, “ O/i, lespauv Zevaux /” — u Oh, 
the poor Dobbins ! ” They didn’t say 
anything about a poor Damiens. 

Note. — Also, that when they took 


his Head, to cram it into the Brazier, 
and burn it with the rest of his Mem- 
bers, they found that his Hair, which 
when he was arrested was of a Dark 
Brown, had turned quite White. 

This Story is Naked Truth, and it 
was done in the Christian country of 
France, and in the Year of our Lord 
Seventeen Hundred and Fifty-Seven. 
It all fell out because a poor, ignorant, 
half-crazy Serving-Man chose to mud- 
dle his Head about the Archbishop of 
Paris and his Billets of Confession, 
and because he would not go to a 
Chirurgeon and be let Blood when 
Jack Dangerous bade him. 

A week after this his Eminence was 
pleased to send for me into his Cabi- 
net, and told me that he had heard 
great Accounts from his Secretary of 
my Parts, Application, and Capacity, 
and that he designed to restore me to 
the position of a Gentleman. He 
asked me if I had a mind for a par- 
ticular Employment and a Secret 
Mission ; and on my signifying my 
willingness to embark in such an Un- 
dertaking, bade me hold myself in 
readiness to travel forthwith into Italy. 

Chapter the Twenty-third. 

OF MY SECRET EMPLOYMENT IN THE 
SERVICE OF THE CARDINAL DE . 

Paris was now clearly no place for 
me ; so bidding adieu to my kind 
Protectress, I made what haste I 
could to quit the city where I had 
witnessed, and in some sense been im- 
plicated in, so Frightful a Tragedy. 
There had always been mingled with 
my Adventurous Temperament a turn 
for sober Reflection ; and I did not 
fail to Reflect with much seriousness 
upon the appalling perils from which 
I had just, by the Mercy of Provi- 
dence, escaped. Setting altogether on 
one side the Pretty Sight I should 
have presented had I been subject to 
the Hellish Tortures which this poor 
crazy Wretch Damiens underwent, I 
justly conceived an extreme Horror 
for this fiendish yet frivolous People, 
who could mingle the twirling of Fans 


The Strange Adventures 

s 

ami the sucking of Sugar-plums with 
the most excruciating Torments ever 
inflicted upon a Human Being. At 
least, so I reasoned to myself ; if we 
English hang and disembowel a Trai- 
tor, at least we strangle him first ; and 
though the sentence is Bloodthirsty, 
the mob would rend ’Squire Ketch in 
pieces were it known that a Spark of 
Life remained in the Body of the Pa- 
tient when the Hangman’s Knife 
touched his Breast ; but these French- 
men have neither Humanity nor De- 
cency, and positively pet and pamper 
up their Victim in order that he may 
be the better able to endure the full 
effects of their infernal Spite. 

Not without considerable Misgivings 
did I undertake my new Employment, 
the more so as I was both forbidden 
and ashamed to impart any inkling of 
its nature to my dear Mistress. Say 
what you will, no man that has a 
spark of Honesty remaining in him 
can have much relish for the calling 
of a Spy. I tried hard to persuade 
myself that this was a kind of Diplo- 
matic Employment ; that I was in- 
trusted with Secrets of State ; and 
that by faithfully carrying out my In- 
structions, I was serving the cause of 
Civilization, and in my humble way 
helping to maintain the Peace of 
Europe. For in all ages there have 
been, and in all to come there must 
be, sober and discreet Persons to act 
as Emissaries, to inquire into the 
conditions of the People, and bring 
back Tidings of the Nakedness or 
Fertility of the Land. It would never 
have been known that there was Corn 
in Egypt, but for the sagacious Inves- 
tigations of Messengers sent to quest 
about in the interest of a Famished 
Community. Nevertheless I admit 
that, although I spread much such 
Balsam upon my galled and chafed 
Conscience, I could not avoid a dismal 
Distrust that all these Arguments 
were vain and sophistical. 1 be words, 
“ Spy, Spy, Spy,” haunted me both 
by day and by night. I saw, in im- 
agination, the Finger ot Derision 
pointed at me, and heard, in spirit, the 


of Captain Dangerous . 

wagging of the Tongues of Evil-minded 
Men. The worst of it was, that the 
occult nature of my Mission prevented 
me from loudly proclaiming my Hon- 
esty in order to vindicate it against 
all comers, and glued my Sword to its 
Scabbard, whence it would otherwise 
furiously have leapt to avenge the 
merest Slight put upon me. 

His Eminence the Cardiual de 

was pleased to equip me for my Jour- 
ney in the most munificent Manner. 
First he directed me to procure a plen- 
tiful stock of Clothes both for travel- 
ling and for gala Occasions, not 
forgetting a couple of good service- 
able Rapiers, as well as a Walking- 
sword, a Dress-foil, and a Hanger, 
with a pair of Holster Pistols, and 
two smaller ones of Steel in case of 
Emergencies. Also, by his advice, 
within the lining of my Coat, by the 
nape of my Neck, just where the bag 
of my Wig hung, I secreted a neat 
little Poniard or Dagger. In a small 
Emerald Ring, of Avhich he made me 
a Present, was compactly stowed a 
quantity of very subtle and potent 
Poison, sufficient to kill Two Men. 
“ One never knows what may happen, 
dear Captain,” says his Eminence to 
me, with his unctuous Smile. “Your- 
Profession is one of sudden Risks, 
leading sometimes to prospects of 
painful Inconvenience. If you are 
brought to such a pass that all your 
Ingenuity will not enable you to extri- 
cate yourself from it, and if you have 
any rational Objection, say, to being 
Burnt Alive, or Broken on the 
Wheel, 'tis always as well to have 
the means at baud of executing ones- 
. self with genteel Tranquillity. Such 
means you will always carry with 
you on your Little Finger ; and I can 
see, by the circumference of the Ring, 
that ’tis only by Sawing off that it 
can be got off from your Digit. 
Poison yourself then, mio caro , if you 
see no other way of getting out of the 
Scrape ; but pray remember this : 
That he who has poison about him, 
and only enough for one, is an Ass. 
Always carry enough for Two. The 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


immersion of that little finger in a 
Glass of Wine, and the pressure of a 
little Spring, would make Hercules so 
much cold chicken in a Moment. 
There are times, dear Captain, when 
you may have to save Half your Po- 
tion to kill yourself, but when you 
may safely lay out the other Half with 
the view of killing somebody else.” 
A mighty pleasant Way had his Emin- 
ence with him ; and his conversation 
was a kind of Borgia Brocade shot 
with Machiavelism. 

My Despatches and other Secret 
Documents I was to carry neatly folded 
and moulded within a Ball of Wax 
not much larger than a Pill. This 
again was put into a Comfit-box of 
Gold, and suspended by a minute but 
stroug Chain of Steel round my Neck. 

“ In difficult Circumstances,” says 
his Eminence, you will open that Com- 
fit box and swallow that little Ball of 
Wax. I have often thought,” he 
pursued, “ that Spies, to be perfect in 
their Vocation, should first of all be 
apprenticed to Mountebanks. At the 
Fair of St. Germain, I have gazed 
with admiration on the grotesquely 
bedizened fellows who swallow 
Swords, Redliot Pokers, and Yards 
of Ribbon without number, and 
thought of what invaluable service 
their Powers of Gullet would be in 
the rapid and effectual concealment 
of Documents the which it is expedi- 
ent to conceal from the eyes of the 
Vulgar.” 

Again, in the folds of a silken Belt, 
in the which I was to keep my Letters 
of Credit and a large unset diamond, 
in case I should be pressed for Money 
in places where there were no Bank- 
ers, — for Diamonds are convertible 
into Cash from one end of the world 
to the other, except among the canni- 
bals, — in this Belt was a little Scrap 
of Parchment secured between two 
squares of Glass, and bearing an In- 
scription in minute characters, which 
I was unable to decipher. I have the 
Scrap of Parchment by me yet, and 
have shown it to Doctor Dubiety, who 
is a very learned man ; but even lie 


is puzzled with it ; and beyond opin- 
ing that the characters are either Ara- 
bic or Sanscrit, cannot give me any 
information regarding their Purport. 

u This Parchment,” observed the 
Cardinal, when he delivered it to me, 
“ will be of no service to you with 
Civil or Military Governors, and it 
will be wise for you not to show it to 
carnal-minded Men ; but if ever you 
get into difficulties with Holy Mother 
Church — I speak not of Heretic Com- 
munions — you may produce it at once, 
and it will be sure to deliver you from 
those Fiery Furnaces and the Jaws of 
Devouring Dragons of whom the said 
Holy Mother Church is sometimes 
forced (through the perversity of Man- 
kind) to make use.” 

Finally, this same Belt contained a 
curious Contrivance, by means of a 
piece of Vellum perforated in divers 
places, for deciphering the Letters I 
might receive from his Eminence or 
his agents. On placing the Vellum 
over the Letter sent, the words intend- 
ed to meet the eyes of the recipient, 
and none other, would appear through 
the incisions made ; while the Vellum 
removed, the body of the Epistle 
would read like the veriest Balderdash. 
This the French call a chijfre a grille , 
and ’tis much used in their secret Dip- 
lomatic Affairs. The best of it is 
that when the two Parties who wish 
to correspond have once settled where 
the incisions are to be, and have each 
gotten their grille, or Peephole Vellum, 
no human being can, under ten thous- 
and combinations of letters, and years 
of toilsome labor, decipher what is 
meant to he expressed, or weed out 
the few Words of Meaning from the 
mass of surrounding Rubbish. 

I bade his Eminence farewell, hav- 
ing the honor to be admitted to his 
petit lever, the felicity to kiss his hand 
and receive his Benediction, and the 
distinction of being conducted down 
the Back Stairs by his Maitre dTIotel, 
and let out by a Side Door in the 
Garden-wall of his Mansion. A close 
Chariot took me one morning in the 
Spring of ’58 to the Barrie re de Lyon, 


200 


The Strange Adventures 

and there I found a Chaise and Post 
horses, and was soon on my road to 
the South, with three hundred Louis 
in Gold in my Valise, and a Letter of 
Credit for any sum under five hun- 
dred, at a time I liked to draw, in my 
Waist-belt. I was Richer in Purse, 
and more bravely Dressed, than ever 
I had been in my life, and travelled 
under the name of the Chevalier Es- 
carbotin ; but I was a Spy, and in 
mine own eyes I was the Meanest 
of the Mean. 

A happy Mercurial Temper and 
cheerful Flow of Spirits soon, how- 
ever, revived within me ; and ere Ten 
Leagues of my Journey were over, 
the Chevalier Escarbotin became once 
more to himself Jack Dangerous. “ I 
will work the Mine of my Manhood,” 

I cried out in the Chaise, “ to the last 
Vein of the Ore.” Viva la Joie ! Yet 
in my innermost heart did I wish my- 
self once more with Captain Blokes 
as the daring supercargo of the dear 
old Marquis , or else a Peaceful Mer- 
chant at Amsterdam, giving good ad- 
vice to the Rogues and Sluts in the 
Rasphuys. O Mr. Vandepeereboom, 
Mr. Vandepeereboom ! 

Six days after my departure from 
Paris, I embarked from Marseille on 
board a Tartane bound for Genoa. 
W e had fine sailing for about three 
days, till by contrary winds we were 
driven into San Remo, a pretty Sea- 
port belonging to the Genoese. This 
abounds so much with Oranges, Lem- 
ons, and other Delicious Fruit, that it 
is called the Paradise of Italy. So 
on to Genoa, where the Beggars live 
in Palaces cheek by jowl with the 
Nobles, who are well-nigh as beggarly 
as they ; and the houses are as lofty as 
any in Europe, and the Streets be- 
tween them as dark and narrow as 
Adam and Eve Court in the Strand. 
The Suburb called San Pietro d’ Arena 
very pretty, and full of commodious 
Villas. There are thirty Parish 
Churches, and at San Lorenzo they 
show a large dish made out of One 
Emerald, which they say was given 
to King Solomon by the Queen of 


of Captain Dangerous. 

Sheba. The Genoese are a cunning 
and industrious People, with a great 
gusto for the Arts, but terrible Thieves. 
The Government a Republic, headed 
by a Doge, that is chosen every two 
years from among the Nobility, and 
must be a Genoese, at least Fifty years 
of age, and no Byblow. He cannot 
so much as lie one Night out of the 
City, without leave had from the Sen- 
ate. When he is elected, they place 
a Crown of Gold on his Head, and a 
Sceptre in his Hand. His Robes are 
of Crimson Velvet, and he has the 
title of Serenity. 

Here I did business with several 
Persons of Consideration ; the Sena- 
tors B — c — i and Della G , the 

rich Banker L , and Monsignore 

the Archprelate X . So by Cor- 

tona, where there is a strong Castle 
on a Hill, to Pavia, an old decaying 
City on the River Tessin, which is so 
rapid that Bishop Burnet says he ran 
down the Stream thirty miles in three 
hours by the help of one Rower only. 
This may be, or t’other way ; but I 
own to placing little faith in the vera- 
city of these Cat-in-Pan Revolution 
Bishops. Here (at Pavy) is a Brass 
Statue of Marcus Antoninus on Horse- 
back ; though the Pavians will have 
it to be Charles the Fifth, and others 
declare it to be Constantine the 
Great. 

After two days here waiting for 
Despatches from his Eminence, which 
came at last in the False Bottom of a 
Jar of Narbonne Honey, and I an- 
swering by a Billet discreetly buried 
in the recesses of a large Bologna 
Sausage, I posted to Milan, through 
a fertile and delicious country, which 
some call the Garden of Italy. A 
broad, clean place, with spacious 
Streets ; but the Wine and Maccaroni 
not half so good as at Genoa. The 
Cathedral full of Relics, some of which 
run up as high as Abraham. In the 
Ambrosian Library are a power of 
Books, and, what is more curious, the 
Dried Heads of several Learned Men 
— amongst others, that of our Bishop 
Fisher, whom King Harry the Eighth 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


put to Death for not acknowledging 
his Supremacy. About two miles 
from hence is a Curiosity, in the shape 
of a Building, where if you fire off a 
Pistol, the sound returns about Fifty 
times. ’Tis done, they told me, by 
two Parallel Walls of a considerable 
length, which reverberate the Souud to 
each other till the undulation is quite 
spent. The which, being so informed, 
I was as wise concerning the Echo as 
I had been before. 

It was my Design to have proceeded 
from Milan either to Venice or to 
the famous Capital City of Rome ; 
but Instructions from his Eminence 
forced me to retrace my steps, and at 
Genoa I embarked for Naples. This 
is a very handsome place, but villan- 
ously Dirty, and governed in a most 
Despotic Manner. Nearly all the 
Corn Country round about belongs to 
the Jesuits, who make a pretty Penny 
by it. The Taxes very high and laid 
on Wine, Meat, Oil, and other Neces- 
saries of Life ; indeed on everything 
eatable except Fruit and Fowls, which 
you may buy for a Song. All For- 
eigners who have here purchased Es- 
tates are loaded with Extraordinary 
Taxes and Impositions. The City is 
remarkable for its Silk Stockings, 
Waistcoats, Breeches, and Caps ; 
Soap, Perfume, and Snuff-boxes. 
They cool their Wine with Snow, 
which they get out of pits dug in the 
Mountain sides. Near here, too, is a 
Burning Mountain they call Vesuvio. 
It may be mighty curious, but ’tis as 
great a Nuisance and Perpetual Alarm 
to the peaceable Inhabitants of Naples 
as a Powder Magazine, Very often 
this Vesuvio gives itself up to hideous 
Bellowing, causing the W indows, nay 
the very Houses, in Naples, to Shake, 
and then it vomits forth vast Quanti- 
ties of melted Stuff, which streams 
down the Mountain-sides like a pot 
boiling over. Sometimes it darkens 
the Sun with Smoke, causing a kind 
of Eclipse ; then a Pillar of Black 
Smoke will start up to a prodigious 
Height in the air, and the next morn- 
ing you will find the Court and Ter- 


race of your House, be it ten miles 
away, all strewn with Fine Ashes 
from Vesuvio. 

Chapter the Twenty-fourth. 

I FALL INTO THE HANDS OF RECREANT 

PAYNIMS, AND AM REDUCED TO A 

STATE OF MISERABLE SLAVERY. 

I think I should have been much 
better off, if, stopping at Naples, I had 
fallen into the blazing Crater of Vesu- 
vio, and have cast up again into the 
air in the shape of Red-Hot Ashes. 
I think it would have been better for 
me to be Bitten by the Tarantula 
Spider (which is about the size of a 
small Nutmeg, and when it bites a 
person throws him into all kinds of 
Tumblings, Auger, Fear, Weeping, 
Crazy Talk, and Wild Actions, ac- 
companied by a kind of Bedlam Gam- 
bado), than to have gone upon the 
pretty Dance I was destined to Lead. 
However, there was no disobeying the 
commands of his Eminence, who, in 
his Smooth Italian way, told me at 
Paris that those of his Servants who 
did not attend to his Behests, were 
much subject to dying Suddenly after 
Supper ; and so, Willy-nilly, I sped upon 
my Dark Errand. 

Business now took me to Venice. 
This is a very grand City, both for the 
Magnificence of its Nobles and the 
Extent of its Commerce. The Doge 
is only a Sumptuous kind of Puppet, 
the Real Government being vested in 
the Seignory, or Council of Ten, that 
£arry matters with a very High Hand, 
but, on the whole, give Satisfaction 
both to the Quality and the Common. 
Here are numbers of Priests of a very 
Free Life and Conversation, and 
swarms of Monks that are notorious 
Evil-doers ; for during the Carnival (a 
very famous one here) they wear 
Masks, sing upon Stages, and fall 
into many other Practices unbecoming 
their Profession. The Venetian Nuns 
are the merriest in all Europe, and 
have a not much better Repute than 
the Monks, many of them being the 
Daughters of the Nobility, who dis- 


202 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


pose of 'em in this manner to save 
the Charges of keeping 'em at home. 
They wear no Veils ; have their Necks 
uncovered ; and receive the Addresses 
of Suitors at the Grates of their Par- 
lours. The Patriarch did indeed at one 
time essay to Reform the abuses that 
had crept into the Nunneries ; but the 
Ladies of San Giacomo, with whom 
he began, told him plainly that they 
were Noble Venetians, and scorned 
his Regulations. Thereupon he at- 
tempted to shut up their House, which 
so provoked 'em that they were going 
to set Fire to it ; but the Senate inter- 
posing, commanded the Patriarch to 
desist, and these Merry Maidens had 
full liberty to resume their Madcap 
Pranks. 

Here they make excellent fine 
Drinking-glasses and Mirrors ; like- 
wise Gold and Silver Stuffs, Turpen- 
tine, Cream of Tartar, and other 
articles. The Streets mostly with 
Water running thro’ 'em, like unto 
Rotterdam, all going to and fro done in 
Boats called Gondoles, — a dismal, 
Hearse-looking kind of Wherry, with 
a prow like the head of a Bass-Viol, 
and rowed, or rather shoved along 
with a Pole by a Mad, Ragged Fel- 
low, that bawls out verses from Tasso, 
one of their Poets, as he plies his Oar. 
The great Sight at Venice, after the 
Grand Canal and St. Mark’s Place, 
is the Carnival, which begins on 
Twelfth Day, and holds all Lent. 
The Diversion of the Venetians is now 
all for Masquerading. Under a Dis- 
guise, they break through their 
Natural Gravity, and fall heartily into 
all the Follies and Extravagances of 
these occasions. With Operas, Plays, 
and Gaming-Houses, they seem to for- 
get all Habits, Customs, and Laws ; 
lay aside all cares of Business, and 
swamp all Distinctions of Rank. 
This practice of Masking gives rise 
to a variety of Love Adventures, of 
which the less said the better ; for the 
Venetian Bona Robas, or Corteggiane, 
as they call 'em now, are a most Art- 
ful Generation. The pursuit of 
Amours is often accompanied by 


Broils and Bloodshed ; and Fiery 
Temper is not confined to the Men, 
but often breaks out in the Weaker 
Sex ; an instance of which I saw one 
day in St. Mark's Place, where two 
Fine Women, Masked, that were 
Rivals for the favour of the same 
Gallant, happening to meet, and by 
some means knowing one another, 
they fell out, went to Cuffs, tore off 
each other’s Mask, and at last drew 
Knives out of their pockets, with 
which they Fought so seriously, that 
one of them was left for Dead upon 
the Spot. 

Another Frolic of the Carnival is 
Gaming, which is commonly in 
Noblemen’s Houses, where there are 
Tables for that purpose in ten or 
twelve Rooms on a floor, and seldom 
without abundance of Company, who 
are all Masked, and observe a pro- 
found Silence Here one meets Ladies 
of Pleasure cheek by jowl with Ladies 
of Quality, who, under the protection 
of a convenient piece of Black Satin 
or Velvet, are allowed to enjoy the 
entertainments of the Season ; but are 
generally attended either by the Hus- 
band or his Spies, who keep a watch- 
ful eye on their Behaviour. Besides 
these Gaming-Rooms, there are others, 
where Sweatmeats, Wine, Lemonade, 
and other Refreshments may be pur- 
chased, the Haughty Nobility of 
Venice not disdaining to turn Tavern- 
keepers at this season of the year. 
Here it is usual for Gentlemen to ad- 
dress the Ladies and employ their wit 
and raillery ; but they must take care 
to keep within the bounds of Polite- 
ness, or they may draw upon them- 
selves the Resentment of the Husbands, 
who seldom put up with an Affront of 
this kind, though perhaps only imag- 
inary, without exacting a severe 
Satisfaction. For the Common Peo- 
ple there are Jugglers, Rope-Dancers, 
Fortune-tellers, and other Buffoons, 
who have stages in the Square of St. 
Mark, where, at all times during the 
Carnival, 'tis almost impossible to pass 
along, owing to the Crowd of Mas- 
queraders. Bull Baitings, Races of 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


Gondoles, and other Amusments, too 
tedious to enumerate, also take place. 
But among the several Shows which 
attract the eyes of the Populace, I 
cannot forbear describing one which is 
remarkable for its oddity, and perhaps 
peculiar to the Venetians. A num- 
ber of Men, by the help of Poles laid 
across each other’s Shoulders, build 
themselves up almost as children do 
Cards » — four or five Rows of ’em 
standing one above the other, and les- 
sening as they advance in height, till 
at last a little Boy forms the Top, or 
Point, of the Structure. After they 
have stood in this manner, to be gazed 
at, some time, the Boy leaps down 
into the arms of people appointed to 
catch him at the Bottom ; the rest 
follow his example, and so the whole 
Pile falls to Pieces. 

The Nobility of Venice are re- 
markable for their Persons as well as 
for their Polite Behaviour, and have 
a great deal of Gravity and Wisdom 
in their Countenances. They wear a 
light Cap with a kind of black Fringe, 
and a long black Gown of Paduan 
Cloth, as their Laws require ; though 
the English have found means to in- 
troduce their Manufactures among ’em. 
Underneath these Gowns they have 
suits of Silk ; and are extremely neat 
as to their Shoes and Stockings. 
Their Perukes are long, full-bottomed, 
and very well Powdered ; and they 
usually carry their Caps in their 
Hands. The Women very well 
shaped, though they endeavour to im- 
prove their Complexions with Washes 
and Paiut. Those of Quality wear 
such high-heeled Shoes, that they can 
scarce walk without having two people 
to support them. In matters of Re- 
ligion (though their worship is as 
pompous as Gold and Jewels can make 
it) the Venetians are very Easy and 
Unconcerned ; and neither Pope nor 
Inquisition is thought much of in the 
Dominions of the Seignory. For 
Music in their Churches they have a 
perfect Passion. The City is well 
furnished with Necessaries ; but the 
want of Cellarage makes all the 


Wine sour. The Inhabitants are of 
a Fresh Complexion, and not much 
troubled with Coughs ; which is 
strange, they having so much Water 
about ’em. They begin their day at 
Sunset, and count one o’clock an hour 
after, and so on to twenty-four ; which 
is likewise a Custom, I believe, among 
the Chinese. 

They bury their Dead within the 
Four-and-Tweuty Hours, and some- 
times sooner. The Funerals of Per- 
sons of Quality are performed with 
great Pomp and Solemnity ; and the 
deceased are carried to the Place of 
Interment with their Faces bare. 
Whilst I was in Venice, their Patriarch 
(who is a kind of Independent Pontiff 
in his own way ; for, as I have said, 
they reckon but little of his Holiness 
here) died, and was buried with this 
Ceremony. He was carried in one 
of his own Coaches, by night, to St. 
Mark’s Church, which was all hung 
with Black for the occasion ; and next 
day the Corpse was laid on a Bed in 
the very middle of the Church, dressed 
in the Sacerdotal Habit, with the 
Head towards the Choir, and his 
Tiara, or Mitre, lying at the feet. At 
each corner of the bed stood a valet de 
chambre , holding a Banner of Black 
Taffety, with the Arms of the De- 
ceased. A hundred large W ax Tapers 
were placed in Candlesticks round the 
Bed, and High Mass was sung ; the 
Sopranos very beautiful. After Mass 
was over, all retired ; but the Body 
lay exposed till evening, when it was 
stripped of its Vestments (for though 
a very Gorgeous people, they are 
Economical in their ways), and put 
into a Leaden Coffin, enclosed in an- 
other of Cypress, and was then let 
down into the Grave. ’Tis not usual 
with the Relations to attend the Fune- 
ral, which they look upon as a Bar- 
barous Custom. But they wear 
Mourning longer and more regularly 
than in many other countries. A 
woman in a Mourning Habit appears 
Black from Head to Foot, not the 
least Bit of Linen being to be seen. 
The nature of my Employment now 


204 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


brought me into intimate Commerce 
with Monsieur B , a French Mer- 

chant of Lyons, who treated me with 
extraordinary Civility, and made great 
Offers of being of Assistance to me 
in my Voyage to Constantinople, 
whither I was now Bound. This 
Gentleman, by means of the French 
Ambassador at the Porte, had gotten 
a Firman, or Passport to enable him 
to travel to that City, and with a pro- 
per number of Attendants, through 
any part of the Turkish Dominions. 
As ’tis inconvenient and dangerous 
Voyaging through the Territories of 
the Great Turk without such a Pro- 
tection, nothing could be more Agree- 
able than the offer he made me of his 
Company, the more so as his Emin- 
ence had enjoined me to keep a Strict 
Watch upon everything that M. B — 
said or did. He had designed to 
reach Constantinople by Land, through 
Bosnia, Servia, Bulgaria, and Rou- 
mania ; yet in compliance with my 
Inclination (I wish my Inclination 
had been at the Deuce), which was 
all for a Sea Passage, he consented to 
embark on board a vessel bound to 
Candia and other Islands of the Archi- 
pelago, from which we were to pro- 
cure a Passage to the Capital of the 
Ottoman Empire. What made this 
Gentleman’s Society more acceptable, 
was his thorough Knowledge of the 
Trade of the Levant, and the Genius 
and Temper of the People. Thus, he 
informed me of the Method of Deal- 
ing with Jews, Armenians, and 
Greeks ; of the Eastern manner of 
travelling in Caravans, and the neces- 
sary precautions against such Acci- 
dents as are mostly fatal to Strangers ; 
and instructed me in the Art of con- 
cealing Things of Value, — although 
I think I too could have given him a 
Lesson in that Device, — and avoid- 
ing those Snares which Governors, 
Military Officers, and Petty Princes 
make use of in order to plunder Trav- 
ellers and Merchants. Under these 
favorable auspices, we embarked, in 
the Autumn of ’37, on board a Trad- 
ing Vessel called the San Marco. 


bound for Candia, but first for Malta, 
so famous for its Order of Knights. 
A fine Gale at North-West carried us 
pleasantly down the Gulf of Venice, 
or Adriatic Sea ; and on the fifth day 
we came in sight of Otranto, a Town 
destroyed by the Turks nigh Three 
Hundred years ago, since which time 
it has hardly regained its Ancient 
Lustre, but at present well Fortified 
and defended by a High Castle, which 

I have heard the Honorable Mr. W al- 
pole, a Fine, Lardy-Dardy, Maccaroni 
Gentleman, that lives at a place called 
Strawberry Hill, by Twitnam, in Eng- 
land, has written a silly Romantic 
Tale about. So we got clear of the 
Gulf of Venice, and in three days 
more, after making Cape Passaro in 
Sicily, entered the Haven of Malta. 

This is an Island that lies between 
Sicily and the Coast of Africa, and 
is of an Egg-shaped figure, about 
twenty miles long and twelve broad. 
The City of Malta is divided into three 
parts, which are properly so many 
Rocks jutting out into the Sea, with 
large Harbors between them. That 
called Valetta, in honor of the Grand 
Master who so gallantly defended the 
place against the Turks, is extremely 
well Fortified, and also defended by a 
Castle, held to be impregnable. The 
City contains about Two Thousand 
Houses, well built with white Stone, 
and Flat-roofed, surrounded by Rails 
and Balusters. On t’other side of the 
Harbor is another City, formerly called 

II Borgo, or the Borough, but now 
named Citta Vittoriosa, alluding to the 
terrible Mauling the Turks got here 
in 1566. St. John’s Church very 
handsome, and on one side of it a fine 
Piazza, with a fountain in the corner. 
Here are all the Tombs of the Grand 
Masters, and a great many Flags 
taken from the Turks. The Right 
Hand of St. John Baptist, wanting 
but Two Fingers, shown here for 
Money, with many other Relics and 
Ornaments. The Grand Master lives 
in a magnificent Palace ; and close 
by is an Arsenal, with Arms for Thirty 
Thousand Men. 


205 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


Ine Treasury is a very stately Edi- 
fice ; but what gives the highest Idea 
of the Charity of this illustrious Order 
is their noble Hospital, where all the 
Sick are received and provided for 
with the utmost Care. The Rooms 
are large and commodious, and in each 
of them there are but two Patients. 
Their Diet is brought to them in rich 
Silver Plate by the Knights themselves, 
who are obliged to this Attendance 
by their Constitutions ; and such an 
exact Decorum is observed and every 
thing performed with such Magnifi- 
cence, that it raises the astcaaishment 
of Strangers. 

But if there be Charity and Benevo- 
lence for the Christian Sick, there is 
little Mercy shown towards Infidels 
and Miscreants. The Prison for the 
Slaves is an enormous building, with 
a Colonnade running round it, and ca- 
pable of lodging three or four thous- 
and of those Unhappy People. There 
are seldom less than Two Thousand 
in the House, except when the Galleys 
of the Order are at Sea upon some 
Expedition. Then the poor Wretches 
are Chained, Night and Day, to the 
Oar ; but when on Shore they have 
only a small Lock on their Ancles, 
like the slaves at Leghorn, and are 
permitted to go to any part of the 
Island, from which they have seldom 
an opportunity of making their Escape. 

The Knights of the Order of St. 
John of Jerusalem, commonly called 
Knights of Malta, after removing from 
Jerusalem to Magrath, from thence 
to Acre, and thence to Rhodes, were 
expelled from that Island by the Sul- 
tan Solyman, having an Army of 
Three Hundred Thousand Men. The 
Knights retired first to Candia, and 
then to Sicily ; but at last the Emperor 
Charles the Fifth gave ’em the Island 
of Malta, which they hold to this day. 
They formerly consisted of Eight Lan- 
guages or Tongues, according to their 
Different Nations, viz. those of Prov- 
ence, Auvergne, France, Italy, Arra- 
gon, Germany, Castile, and England; 
but this last one has been extinct since 
our Harry the Eighth’s time, and 


206 


what English Knights there be who 
are Papists are forced to find their 
Tongue where they can. Each of the 
Languages has its Chiefs, who are also 
called Pillars and Grand Crosses, be- 
ing distinguished by a large White 
Cross ’broidered on their Breasts. 
The Seven Languages have their res- 
pective Colleges and Halls in Malta, 
the Head of each House being called 
the Grand Prior of his Nation ; and 
to each belongs a certain number of 
his Commanderies. The Knights, at 
their entrance into the Order, must 
prove their Legitimacy, as well as 
Nobility, by four Descents, and are 
termed Chevaliers by Right. Those 
who are raised to the rank of Nobles, 
for some Valiant Exploit, are called 
Chevaliers by Favor. None are ad- 
mitted by the Statutes of the Order 
under the age of Sixteen ; but some 
are received from their very Infancy 
on paying a large Sum of Money, or 
by Dispensation from the Pope. All 
the Knights oblige themselves to Celi- 
ibacy, which does not hinder their 
leading very Disorderly Lives ; and 
indeed Malta is full of Loose Cattle 
of all kinds. When they are Professed, 
a Carpet is spread on the Ground, on 
which is set a Piece of Bread, a Cup 
of Water, and a Naked Blade ; and 
they are told, “ This is what Religion 
gives yon. You must procure your- 
self the rest with your Sword.” The 
which they do, to a pretty consider- 
able Tune, by spoiling of the Turks. 
After they make their Vows, they 
wear a White Cross or Star, with 
Eight Points, over their Cloaks or 
Coats, on the Left Side, which is the 
proper Badge of their Order, the 
Golden Maltese Cross being only an 
Ornament. The ordinary Habit of 
the Grand Master is a kind of Cassock, 
open before, and tied about him with 
a Girdle, at which hangs a Purse, al- 
luding to the Charitable ends of their 
Order ; — but ’tis not to be denied that 
they have grown very Proud, and 
Live, many of ’em, in as Shameful 
Luxury as the Prince Bishops of Ger- 
many. Over his Cassock the Grand 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


Master wears a Velvet Gown or 
Cloak when he goes to Church on 
Solemn Festivals. He is addressed 
under the Title of Eminence by all 
the Knights ; but his Subjects of Malta, 
and the neighboring Islands, style him 
Your Highness. As Sovereign, he 
coins Money, pardons Criminals, and 
bestows the places of Grand Priors, 
Bailiffs, &c. ; bitf, in most cases of 
importance is obliged to seek the ad- 
vice of his Council, so that he is not 
wholly Absolute. The Ecclesiastics 
roper of the order — for the rest are 
ut Military Monks, that do a great 
deal more Fighting than Praying, and 
savor much more of the Camp than 
of the Convent — are Chaplains, Mon- 
astic Clerks, and Deacons. They 
likewise wear a White Cross, partake 
of the Privileges of the Institution, 
and are great Rascals. 

’Tis well known that the Knights 
of Malta are destined to the Profession 
of Arms for the Defence of the Chris- 
tian Faith, and the Protection of Pil- 
grims of all Nations. It is to be 
observed, that there are also Female 
Hospitallers of the Order of St. John, 
sometimes called Chevalieres, or She- 
Knights, of equal Antiquity with the 
Knights, whose business it is to take 
care of the Women Pilgrims in a Hos- 
pital apart from that of the Men. 
As the Order look upon the Turks as 
the Great Enemies of Christianity, 
they think themselves obliged to be in 
a state of perpetual Hostility with that 
people, and, for Centuries, have never 
so much as signed the preliminaries 
of a Peace with ’em. They have 
performed innumerable and astonish- 
ing exploits against their much-hated 
Enemies, the Insolence of whose Ro- 
vers they continue to Restrain and 
Chastise, except when the Rovers, as 
sometimes happens, get the better of 
’em. They have Seven Galleys be- 
longing to the Order, each of which 
carries Five Hundred Men, and as 
mauy Wretches in Fetters tugging 
away at the Oar for Dear Life. Every 
one of these Galleys mounts Sixteen 


sides these they fit out a great many 
Private Ships, by license from the 
Grand Master, to cruise up and down 
among the Turks, doing great Havoc, 
and thereby growing very Rich. Thus 
it will be plain to the Reader, that a 
Knight of Malta is a kind of Medley 
of Seaman, Swashbuckler, and Saint 
— Admiral Benbow, Field-Marshal 
Wade, and Friar Tuck all rolled up 
into one. 

I did become acquainted with one 
of these Holy Roystering Cavalieros, 
by the name of Don Ercolo Amadeo 
Sparafucile di San Lorenzo, that was 
a perfect Model of all these Charac- 
teristics. He Confessed with almost 
as great regularity as he Sinned. The 
Chaplains must have held him one of 
the heartiest of Penitents ; for he never 
came back from a Cruise without 
a whole Sackful of Misdeeds, and^ 
straightway hied him to St. John’s 
Church, to fling his Sinful Ballast 
overboard and lighten Ship. How he 
swore ! I never heard a man take 
the entrails of Alexander the Great 
in vain before ; but this was an ordin- 
ary expletive with Don Ercolo. He 
belonged to the Italian Language, 
though I suspected he had a dash of 
the Spanish in him ; and many a Gay 
Bout over the choicest of Wines have 
I had with him at his Inn, as their 
College-halls are sometimes called. 
He could drink like a Fish, and fight 
like a Paladin. He was a good Prac- 
tical Sailor and Master of Naviga- 
tion ; Rode with ease and dexterity ; 
and was a Proficient in that most diffi- 
cult trick of the Manege , that of rid- 
ing a horse en Biais , as the French 
term it, and of which our Newcastle 
has learnedly treated ; was an admir- 
able Performer on the Guitar and Viol 
di Gamba ; Sung very sweetly ; fenced 
exquisitely ; must have been in his 
Youth (he was now about Sixty, and 
his hair was grizzled grey) as Beauti- 
ful as a Woman, as Graceful as my 
Sweet Protectress Lilias, as Brave as 
the Cid, and as Cruel as Pedro of 
Spain. As it is so long ago, and the 
Principal Parties in the Allair are all 


Pieces of Heavy Artillery ; and be- 

207 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


Dead, I don’t mind disclosing that my 
Instructions from his Eminence the 
Cardinal were to Buy the Cavaliere 
di San Lorenzo at any Price. I told 
him so plainly over a Flask of Right 
Alicant, at a little Feast I had made 
for him in Return for his many Hos- 
pitalities, and gave him to understand 
that he had but to say the word and 
Scroppa, the great Goldsmith of Stra- 
da Reale, would be glad to cash his 
Draft for any Sum under Fifty Thous- 
and Ducats. For his Eminence want- 
ed the Cavaliere to be a Friend of 
France, and France at that time 
thought that she very much wanted the 
Island of Malta. 

Don Ercolo was not in the least 
angry ; only, he Laughed in my Face. 

“ Chevalier Escarbotin,” he said 
gaily, “ you have mistaken your man. 

Tell his Eminence the Cardinal de ■ 

that he may go and hang himself. I 
am not to be bought. I am Rich to 
Two Hundred and Fifty Thousand 
ounces of Gold, all got out of spoiling 
the Infidels. When I die, I shall 
leave half to the Order, and half to 
the families of certain Poor Women 
Creatures whom I have wronged, and 
who are Dead.” 

I said, to appease him, that I was 
but Joking. 

“ Ta, ta, ta ! ” retorts he. “ I know 
your Trade well enough. I have been 
too much among men not to be able to 
scent out a Spy. But you are a very 
Jovial Fellow, Escarbotin ; and I don’t 
care what you are, so long as you are 
not a Turk, which, by the way, I don’t 
think you would mind turning.” 

“ O, Signore Cavaliere ! ” — I began 
to expostulate. 

“ What does it matter? ” quoth Don 
Ercolo. “ Does it matter anything at 
all? Perhaps some of these days, 
when I am tired of the Eight Points, 
I shall take the Turban myself.” 

“ A Renegado ! ” I cried. 

“Many a brave Gentleman has 
turned Renegado ere this,” answered 
he. “Next to the pleasure of Fighting 
the Turks, I should esteem the condi- 
tion of being a Turk myself, and 


fighting against the Order of Malta. 
But I forgot. You are a Lutheran ; 
although how you came to be a Prot- 
estant, with that name of Escarbotin, 
I can’t make out.” 

I murmured something about be- 
longing to the Reformed Church at 
Geneva ^ although I forgot that they 
were mostly Calvinists there, not 
Lutherans. But of this Don Ercolo 
took little notice, and went on. 

“ When yon write to the Cardinal, 
tell him that Ercolo Amadeo Sparafu- 
cile di San Lorenzo is not to be 
purchased. The sly old Fox ! He 
knows I have great influence with my 
Uncle the Grand Master. Tell him 
that I am very much obliged to him 
for his Offer, and thank him for old 
Acquaintance’ sake. Nay ; I believe 
I am some kind of Kinsman of his 
Eminence, on the Mother’s side. But 
assure him that I am not in the least 
Angry w T ith him. If I were poor, I 
should probably accept his Offer ; but 
none of the Poor Knights of our Order 
are worth Buying. It matters little 
to me whe ther France, or Spain, or 
even Heretic England gets hold of this 
scorching Rock, with its Swarms of 
Hussies and Rascals ; only I prefer 
amusing myself, and fighting the T urks, 
to meddling in Politics, and running 
the risk of a life-long dungeon in the 
Castle of St. Elmo.” 

There was a long Silence after this, 
and he seemed plunged in profound 
Meditation. Suddenly he fills a Cup 
with Wine, drains it, and, in his old 
careless manner, says to me, — 

“Tell him this — be sure to tell him, 
lest he should be at the trouble of 
sending Emissaries to Poison me — I 
have the best Antidote of any in the 
Levant, and shall take three drops of 
it after every Bite and Sup for Six 
Months to come. Not that I dread 
you. All Spy as you are, you still 
look like an Honest Fellow. You 
would not poison an old Friend, would 
you, Little Jack Dangerous ? ” 

I started to my feet, and stared at the 
grizzled, handsome Knight in blank 
amazement. We had been convers- 


208 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


ing iu tlic French tougue ; but the lat- 
ter part of his Speech lie had uttered 
in mine own English, and with a fault- 
less accent. Moreover, where before 
had I heard that Voice, had I seen 
that Face ? My Memory rolled back 
over the hills and valleys of years ; 
but the Mountains were too high, and 
the Recesses behind them inaccessible 
without Mental Climbing, for which I 
was not prepared. 

44 Little Jack Dangerous,” contin- 
ued the grizzled Knight, u where have 
you been these Seven-aud-thirty Years ? 
When I knew you first, you were but 
a poor little Runaway Schoolboy, and 
I was a Tearing Fellow iu the Flush 
and Pride of my hot Youth.” 

44 A Runaway Schoolboy ! ” I stam- 
mered. 

44 Ay ! had you not fled from the 
Tyranny of one Gnawbit ?” 

44 1 remember Gnawbit well,” I an- 
swered, with a shudder. 

44 Do you remember Chari wood 
Chase, and the Blacks that were wont 
to kill venison there ? ” 

44 1 do.” 

44 And Mother Drum, and Cicely, 
and Jowler, and the Night Attack, and 
how near you were being hanged ? 
Do you remember Captain Nigiit ? ” 

A Light broke in upon me. I re- 
cognized my earliest Protector. I 
seized his hand. I was fairly blubber- 
ing, and would have rushed into his 
Arms ; but there was something Cold 
and Haughty in his manner that re- 
pulsed me. 

44 ’Tis well,” he said. 44 1 am a 
Knight of the most Illustrious Order 
of St. John of Jerusalem, and an Ita- 
lian Cavalier of Degree. You — ” 

44 1 am a Spy,” I cried out lialf-sob- 
bing. 44 What was I to do ? My 
Malignant Fate hath ever been against 
me. I am despicable in your Eyes, but 
not so despicable as I am in mine own.” 

44 There, there,” he cries out, very 
placably. 44 There’s no great harm 
done, and there’s much of a muchness 
between us. When you first came 
across me, was I not stealing the King’s 
Deer in Chari wood Chase, besides bc- 
14 


ing in Trouble — I don’t mind owning 
to you now — on account of King 
James ? ’Twixt you, Jack Danger- 
ous, Flibustier, Saltabadil, and Spy, 
and Captain Night, now called Don 
Ercolo et cetera, et cetera di San Lo- 
renzo, and a Knight of Malta, there 
is not much perhaps to choose. The 
World hath its Strange Ups and Downs, 
and we must e’en make the best of 
them. Sit you down, Jack Danger- 
ous, and we will have t’other Flask.” 

We had t’other Flask, and very good 
Wine it was ; and for the rest of the 
time I remained in Malta, Don Ercolo 
continued to be my Fast Friend, even 
as he had been in my Youth. And 
yet ’twas mainly through his instru- 
mentality that I quitted the Island ; 
for he sent his Page to me with a let- 
ter, written in our own dear English 
Tongue, in the which he instantly de- 
sired me, as I valued my Life and the 
Interests of my Employers, to put the 
Broad Seas between myself and the 
Grand Master ; for that an Inkling of 
my Errand had got Wind, and that 
the party unfavorable to France being 
then uppermost, I ran immediate risk 
of being cast into a Dungeon, if not 
Hanged. For this Reason, said Don 
Ercolo, lie- must forbear any further 
Commerce with me (not wishing to 
draw Suspicion on himself, for the 
Knights are very jealous in Political 
Affairs) ; but he assured me of his 
continued Friendship, and desired if I 
stood in Need of any Funds for my 
Journey to inform the Page, that lie 
might furnish me secretly with what 
Gold I needed. But I wanted nothing 
in this way, having ample Credits ; so 
making up my Valises with all con- 
venient Speed, the Chevalier Escarbo- 
tin bade adieu to Malta. 

I took Passage in a Speronare that 
was bound to Candia, where I hoped 
to find some Trading vessel of heavier 
Burden to take me to Constantinople. 
The Mediterranean Sea here very 
beautiful, and delightful to see the Dol- 
phins, Tunnies and other Fish, that 
frequently leapt out of the Water, and 
followed our Ship in great Numbers. 


209 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


Also a Waterspout, which is a Phe- 
nomenon very well known to Seamen 
in the Levant Trade, and reckoned very 
dangerous. It looked mighty Fierce and 
Terrific; and our Sailors, to conjure 
it away, had recourse to the super- 
stitious devices of cutting the air with 
a Black-Handled Knife, and reading 
the First Chapter of St John’s Gospel, 
accounted of great Efficacy in dispers- 
ing these Spouts. 

Woe is me ! After Six Days’ most 
pleasant Sailing, and after doubling 
Cape Spada, and in very sight of Canea 
(which is the Port of Candia ) , a strange 
Sail hove in Sight, gave Chase, came 
up to us an hour before sundown, 
and without as much as, By your 
leave, or With your leave, opened Fire 
upon us. A Couple of Swingers from 
her Double-shotted Guns were a Belly- 
ful for our poor little Speranore, in 
which there were but Ten Men and a 
Boy, Passengers included ; and we 
were fain to submit. Oh, the intoler- 
able Shame and Disgrace! that Jack 
Dangerous, who had been All Round 
the World with that Renowned Com- 
mander, Captain Blokes, and had 
Chased, Taken, and Plundered many 
a good tall Ship belonging to the Span- 
iards, — ay, and had landed on their 
Main, Spoiled their Cities and Settle- 
ments, Toasted their Fine Ladies, and 
held their Chief Governors to Ran- 
som, — should be laid in the Bilboes 
by a Rascally African Pirate Vessel 
mounting Nine Guns, and belonging 
to the most Heathenish, Knavish, and 
Bloodthirsty Town of Algiers. My 
Gall works now to think of it ; but 
Force was against us, and the Disaster 
was not to be helped. I was in such 
a Mad Rage as to be near Braining 
the Captaiu of the Speronare with a 
Marline-Spike, and would have as- 
suredly blown out the Brains of the 
first Moor that boarded us, had not 
the Italian Captain and his Mate seized 
each one of my arms, and by Main 
Force Avrested my Weapons from me. 
And in this (though hotly enraged 
with ’em at first, and calling them all 
kinds of Abusive Epithets) I think 


they acted less like Traitors than like 
Persons of Sense and Discretion ; for 
what Avere Ave Ten (and the Boy) 
against full Fifty powerful Devils, all 
armed to the Teeth, and who Avould 
assuredly have cut all our Throats had 
Ave shown the least Resistance. 

So they had their Will of us, and 
Ave Avere all made Prisoners, prepara- 
tory to undergoing the Avorse Fate of 
Slaves. Vain noAv, indeed, Avere all 
his Eminence’s Secret Precautions 
about the Concealment of Missives ; 
for these Rascal Moors made no more 
ado, but stripped us of every Rag of 
Clothing, ripping up the Seams there- 
of, and examining our very Hair, in 
quest of Gold and Jewels. The Boat- 
swain, hoA\ r e\ r er, that Avas appointed 
to search me, after taking from me 
all my Stock of Money, Avhich Avas 
Considerable, returned to me the fa- 
mous Bit of Parchment between the 
Glasses, which Avas to bear me Harm- 
less against the ClaAvs of Holy Mother 
Church if she happened to turn Tiger- 
Cat ; for these Mahometans haA T e a 
profound respect for Charms and Amu- 
lets, and very like he took this for one, 
which could be no good to him, an 
Infidel, but might serve a Frank at a 
pinch. There Avas another Article, 
too, Avhich he restored to me, after 
Examination, and of Avhich I have 
hitherto made no mention. What was 
this but a little Portrait of my Beloved 
Protectress, which I carried Avith me 
next my Heart ? Not that I had ever 
ventured to be so bold as to Ask her 
for such a pledge, or that she had fa- 
voured me enough to give it me ; but 
while I Avas in Paris there had been 
limned by the great French Painter, 
Monsieur Boucher, a Picture of one 
of the Opera Ballets, not Orpheus’s 
Story, but something out of Homer’s 
Poetry — Ulysse chez Alcinous , I think 
’twas called, — and this Picture con- 
tained very Life-like Effigies of all the 
Dancers that stood in the front rank, 
of whom my sweet Mistress Lilias 
Avas one. From this au Engraving in 
the Like Manner Avas made, Avhich 
was put forth by the Printsellers just 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


before I left Paris ; and I declare I 
gave a Louis d’Or, and Ten Livres, 
Twelve Sols, for a Copy, and cutting 
out the Pictured Head of my Protec- 
tress with a sharp Penknife, had it 
pasted down and framed in a Golden 
Locket. When the Boatswain saw 
this, he Grinned, till the Turban round 
his tawny Head might have been taken 
for a Horse-collar. He wrenched the 
Portrait out of its Frame, and put the 
Gold among the heap of Plunder that 
was gathered, for after division, on the 
Deck, and was then about to throw 
the dear Bit of Paper into the Sea, — 
for these Moors think it Sinful to por- 
tray the Human Countenance in any 
way, — but I besought him so Ear- 
nestly, both by Signs and supplicatory 
Gestures, and even, I believe, Tears, 
to restore it to me, that he desisted ; 
and putting his Finger to his Lips, as 
a Hint that I was not to reveal his 
Clemency to his Commander, gave 
me back my precious Portrait. He 
would have, however, the fine Chain 
I wore round my Neck ; so I was 
fain to make an Opening between the 
two Sheets of Glass that covered my 
Amulet, and push in the Portrait, 
face downwards ; and the two together 
I hung to a bit of slender Lanyard. 
But all my brave Clothes were taken 
from me, and in an Hour after my 
Capture I was Bare-footed, and with 
no other Apparel than a Ragged Shirt 
and a Pair of Drawers of Canvas. 
To this Accoutrement was speedily 
added about Twenty-one Pounds of 
Fetters on the W rists and Ancles ; and 
then I, and the Captain, and the Mate, 
and the Men, and the Boy, were put 
into a Boat and taken on board the 
Algerine, where we were flung into 
the Hold, and had nothing better to 
eat for many days than Mouldy Bis- 
cuit and Bilge-Water. The Cargo of 
the Speronare was mostly Crockery- 
ware and Household Stuff, for the use 
of the Candiotes ; and the Moors 
would not be at the trouble of Re- 
moving, so they Scuttled her, and bore 
away to the Norrard. 


Item . — I swallowed my Despatches, 
but the Moors got hold of my Letters 
of Credit and my Cipher. 

Chapter tiie Twenty-fifth. 

AFTER MANY SURPRISING VICISSITUDES, 

J. DANGEROUS BECOMES BESTUSCHID 

BASHAW. 

So we were all taken into Algiers. 
’Tis called “The Warlike” by that 
proud People, the Turks ; but with 
much more Reason, I think, should it 
be named “ The Thievish.” Out 
upon the Robbers’ Den ! This most 
abominable Place, which has, during 
so many Ages, braved the Resentment 
of the most powerful Princes of Chris- 
tendom, is said to contain above 
100,000 Mahometans, — among them 
not above Thirty Renegadoes, — 15,000 
Jews, and 4000 Christian Slaves. 
’Tis full of Mosques and other Hea- 
thenish places of Worship, and is 
strongly Fortified, both towards the 
Sea and the Land. The Ship that 
took us was a Brigantine ; and they 
have nigh a Hundred of ’em (besides 
Row-boats), mounting from Ten to 
Fifty Guns, with which they ravage 
the Trade of Europe. There is little 
within the City that is Curious, save 
the Dogs, which are very abundant, 
and very Fierce and Nasty. The 
Street Bab-Azoun is full of Shops, and 
Jews dealing in Gems and Goldsmiths’ 
Work. The Hills and Valleys round 
the City are everywhere beautified with 
Gardens and Country Seats, whither 
the Wealthy Turks retire during the 
Heats of Summer. Some of the W ild 
Bedoween Tribes up the country go 
Bare-headed, binding their Temples 
only with a Fillet to prevent their 
hair growing troublesome. But the 
Moors and Turks in Algiers wear on 
the crowns of their Heads a small 
Cap of Scarlet Woollen Cloth, that is 
made at Fez. The Turban is folded 
round the bottom of these Caps, and 
by the fashion of the folds you can tell 
the Soldiers from the Citizens. The 
Arabs wear a loose Garment called a 


211 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


Hylic, Avhich serves them as a com- 
plete Dress by Day, and a Bed and 
Coverlet by Night. ’Tis observable 
that when the Moorish Women appear 
in Public, they constantly fold them- 
selves so close up in their Ilykes that 
very little of their Faces can be seen ; 
but in the Summer Months, when they 
retire to their Country Seats, they 
walk about with less Caution and Re- 
serve, and, at the approach of a Stran- 
ger, only let fall their Veils. 

What became of the Master and 
Crew of the Spcronare I know not. 
They were but Weakly Creatures ; and 
I conjecture were sold otf into private 
Hands and sent up the Country. Now, 
although I was past the Middle Age, 
and indeed drifting into years, I was 
still of Unbowed Stature and great 
Strength, and a Personable Fellow, 
hardened in the furnace of Danger 
and Adventure. This led to my being 
reserved from the public Slave-Market 
for the Dey of Algiers' own use. W oe 
is me, again ! The Distinction profited 
me little, for it merely amounted to 
my being made Stroke-oar of the third 
row of the Dey’s State-Barge, or Gal- 
leassc. Imagine me now, in a Tunic 
and Drawers of Scarlet Serge, and a 
White Turban round my^ilead to keep 
me from Sun-stroke, chained by the 
Ancles to a bench, and with an Iron 
Collar round my Neck, from which 
another Chain passed to a Bar run- 
ning fore and aft the whole length of 
the Galleasse. Between the benches 
of Rowers runs a narrow Planking ; 
and up and down this continually 
patrols a great Tawny Ruffian of a 
Moorish Boatswain, armed with a 
Whip of Rhinoceros Hide, which, with 
a Will, he lays on to the Shoulders of 
those who do not tug hard enough at 
the Oar. Miserable and fallen as was 
my state, I did yet manage to evade 
the crowning Degradation of Stripes ; 
for, being a Man used to the Sea, and 
full of Courageous Activity, I got 
through my toil so as to make it im- 
possible for my Superiors to find fault 
with me ; and besides, in a few Avoids 
of Lingua Franca that I picked up, I 


gave the Boatswain to understand 
that if ever he hit me Avith his Rhi- 
noceros Thong, I should take the ear- 
liest opportunity of Strangling him. 
As for our Food, ’twas mainly Beans, 
and in the morning a Mess of boiled 
Maize they call Couscoussou, Avith 
some villanous Rank Butter, melted, 
poured over it. And sometimes the 
Carcass of a Sheep that had died of 
Disease avos given to us. But what- 
cver avc had Avas eaten on our benches, 
and the Cook of the Galleasse passed 
up and doAvn the planking to serve 
out the Rations. We Ate on our 
benches, we Slept on our benches, and 
some of us Died on our benches. 
There Averc Ninety-two Christian 
Slaves on board the Dey’s Galleasse, 
and Twelve on my Bench. Being 
Stroke-oar, I Avas spared the continual 
contemplation of a Man’s back in front 
of me, Avhich other Slaves have told 
me makes you so mad that you Avant 
to Bite him ; but ’twas scarcely less 
Vexatious to have behind, as I had, 
a Chattering FelloAv of a Frenchman, 
forever jabbering forth his complaints, 
and not bearing them Avith the surly 
Dignity of a Briton. I could almost 
hear this felloAv grimace ; and he Avas 
never tired of bemoaning his bygone 
happy state as a Hairdresser’s Jour- 
neyman in the Rue St. Ilonore at 
Paris. “ Why did a Vain Ambition 
prompt me to journey from Marseilles 
to Constantinople?” cried he about 
Fifty times a day. u Why did I rely 
on the protection of my Wife’s Cousin, 
Avho gave me recommendations to his 
brother, Cook-in-Chief to the Ambas- 
sador of France at the court of tfce 
Antique Byzantium {V antique By- 
zance) ? W here is my W if e ? W here 
is my Wife’s Cousin? They arc 
drinking the Avinc of Ramonueau ; 
they arc dancing at the Banders. Oh, 
my Cocottc ! Avhere is my Cocotte ? ” 
“ Hang your Cocottc ! ” I used to 
cry out in a rage. “ ’Tis bad enough 
to be mewed up here like a Bear in a 
pit, without being Avorricd by a con- 
founded Barber’s Clerk ! ” 

at the Oar full 


212 


I had been Tugginj 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


Six Months, when a change came over 
my lamentable Lot. The Dcy of Al- 
giers was at this time one Mahomet 
Bassa, a very Bold, Fierce, Fighting 
Man, but of the meanest Extraction, 
and one, indeed, that had been no 
more than a common Soldier, from 
which he had sprung to be, by turns, 
Oda-Bashee or Lieutenant, Bullock* 
Bashee or Captain, Tiah-Bashee or 
Colouel, and Aga or General. For 
among these strange people every val- 
iant and aspiring Soldier, — 1 wish 
’twas so in England, — though taken 
yesterday from the Plough, may be 
considered as Heir-Apparent to the 
Throne. Nor are they ashamed of 
the obscurity of their birth. This 
Mahomet Bassa, in a dispute he, once 
had with the Spanish Consul, said : 
“ My mother sold Sheep’s Trotters, 
and my father Neat’s Tongues; but 
they would have been ashamed to ex- 
pose for sale on their stalls a Tongue 
so worthless as thine.” Mahomet 
Bassa was, like most of the Turks, a 
man of Pleasure, and his Harem was 
furnished with an extraordinary num- 
ber of choice Beauties. 

His Highness (as he is called), hap- 
pening to single me out from the rest 
of the Slaves on board the Galleasse, 
and being told that I was English — 
for equally in hopes of Bettering my 
Condition, and for the purpose of 
keeping Secret my Employment with 
his Eminence, I had avowed myself 
to be of that Nation — ordered me to 
be released from my Chains, and 
brought before him at the Divan. 
Through his Interpreter, a cunning 
Rogue from Corfu, who spoke most 
Languages indifferently well, he asked 
me who I was, and how I came to be 
aboard the Speronare. I answered, 
conveniently mixing fact with fiction, 
that I had been a Captain by Sea and 
Land in the Service of the King of 
England; that I had earned a good 
deal of Prize-Money; had retired 
from Active Duties, being now nigh 
upon Fifty years of Age, and was 
taking my pleasure by voyaging in a 
part of Europe with which I had 


hitherto been little acquainted. This 
Answer seemed to satisfy him pretty 
well ; although he was very curious 
to know whether I had any Kindred 
in the Island of Malta, or any fore- 
gathering among the Knights. For- 
tunately for me the Interpreter, to 
whom I had given a hint of ultimate 
Reward, deposed that I could not 
speak twenty words of Maltese (which 
is a kind of Bastard Italian) ; and ho 
told me that if it had been discovered 
that I was in any way Connected with 
the Order, I should surely have been 
Impaled ; the Dcy being then in a 
towering Rage with the Knights, ono 
of whose Commanders had just cap- 
tured one of his finest Brigantines, 
and Dressed Ship, as he humorously 
put it, by hanging every Man-Jack of 
the Crew at the Yard-arm, and the 
Algerine Captain at the Mizcn. The 
Dey then asked me if I had any 
Friends who I thought would pay my 
Rausom, the which he placed at the 
Moderate Computation of Four Thous- 
and Gold Achmedies (about Fifteen 
Hundred Pounds sterling). I an- 
swered, that I thought I could raiso 
about half that Sum, if I were allowed 
to communicate with one Monsieur 
Foscuc, a Banker at Marseilles, upon 
whom I had — or rather my Captors 
had — a Letter of Credit, which they 
had taken from me. But by Ill-luck 
this Letter of Credit could not be 
found. The Captain and Crew of the 
Rover that took the Speronare were 
all well bastinadoed about it, but no 
Letter was forthcoming ; and I am 
more inclined to think that it was 
thrown, in sheer Ignorance, over- 
board, than that it was Embezzled. 
However, as ’twas not to be discov- 
ered, the Dey began to look upon mo 
as an Impostor ; but I earnestly repre- 
sented to the Interpreter that, if I had 
fcime to write to Monsieur Foscue, all 
would be right. This I had his Iligh- 
nesses’s gracious permission to do, 
and meanwhile was to remain a Slave ; 
but was not sent back to the Galleys. 
Being a Strong Fellow, and professing 
to know something about Gardening 


213 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


— Lord help me ! I had never touched 
a Spade ten times in my Life — I was 
sent to work in his Highness’s Gar- 
dens at the Castle of Sitteet-ako-Leet. 
As for my Letter, I penned it in as 
good French as I could muster, beg- 
ging Monsieur Foscue to communicate 
at once with his Eminence, telling 
him how I had been captured, and 
that my Letter of Credit had been 
taken from me, and of the Sorry Plight 
I was now in. I was given to under- 
stand that from Six to Nine Months 
must pass by before I could expect an 
Answer ; for that Safe Conducts to 
Christian Packets between Algiers 
and Marseilles were only granted 
thrice a year, and the last was but 
just departed. Whereupon I resigned 
myself to my Captivity, hoping for 
Better Days. 

The Head Gardener of the Dey 
was an old Renegado German, named 
Baupwitz, who tried hard to convert 
me to the Mussulman Faith. But in 
addition to my staunch Attachment to 
the Protestant Religion, I could see 
that the State and Condition of the 
few Renegados in Algiers was veity 
mean and miserable, and that they 
were despised alike by Turks, Moors, 
Arabs, Bcdoweens, and Jews. And, 
indeed, what good had Baupwitz done 
himself by turning Paynim ? Thus 
much I put to him plainly ; at which 
the Old Man was angered, and for 
some days used me very spitefully ; 
when the Dey, coming to the Castle, 
took it into his head to have me 
brought back to Algiers, and enrolled 
among his Musicians as a Player upon 
the Cymbals. I declare that although 
able to troll out a Stave now and then, 
I could not so much as Whistle u God 
save the King ; ” but I managed to 
clash my two Saucepan-Lids or Cym- 
bals together and to make a Noise, 
which is all the Turks care for, they 
having no proper Ear for Music. As 
one of his Highness’s Musicians, I 
was dressed very grandly, with a mon- 
strous Turban all covered with Gold 
Spangles and Silk Tassels ; but I had 
a Collar of Silver riveted round my 


214 


Neck, and Silver Shackles round my 
Ancles, and Silver Manacles round 
my Wrists ; and was still a Slave. 

The rest of the Musicians were 
either Black Negroes or Cophtic Chris- 
tians, and they used me with Decent 
Civility ; nor did the Master of the 
Musicians — otherwise a most cruel 
Moor — go out of his way to flout, 
much less smite me with his Rattan. 
If he had dared but to lay one Stripe 
upon me, I would have sprang upon 
the Wretch and dashed out his Brains 
with my Cymbals, even if I had been 
put upon the Pale for it half an hour 
afterwards. 

Lodged in the Guard-house at the 
Dey’s Palace, with pretty abundant 
Rations, and some few Piastres daily 
to buy Wine (I being a Frank) and 
Tobacco, and pretty well treated by 
the Colologlies, or Moorish Soldiers, I 
did not pass such a very bad time of 
it ; and when off Duty, had liberty to 
go about the City and Suburbs pretty 
much as I chose. And I was a hun- 
dred times better off than the Moslem 
Slaves are at Malta. 

These Algerines are an Uncouth, 
Savage People ; and the Turkish Des- 
potism has quite destroyed that se- 
curity and Liberty which of old gave 
birth and encouragement to Learning : 
hence the knowledge of Medicine, 
Philosophy, and the Mathematics, 
which once so flourished among the 
Arabs, is now almost entirely lost. 
The Children of the Moors and Turks 
are sent to School at about Six years 
old, where they arc taught to Read 
and Write for the Value of about a 
Penny a week of our Money. Instead 
of Paper or a Slate, each boy has a 
piece of thin square Board, slightly 
daubed over with Whiting; on this 
he makes his Letters, which may be 
wiped off or renewed at pleasure. 
Having made some progress in the 
Koran, he is initiated into the Cere- 
monies and Mysteries of the Mahom- 
etan Religion ; and when he has dis- 
tinguished himself in any of these 
branches of Learning, he is Richly 
Dressed, mounted on a Horse finely 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


Caparisoned, and paraded, amidst the 
Huzzas of his School-fellows, through 
the Streets ; while his Friends and 
Relations assemble to congratulate his 
Parents, and load him with Toys and 
Sweetmeats. And this Observance 
answers to our Western Rite of Con- 
firmation. But after being three or 
four years at School, the Boys are put 
'Prentice to Trades or enrolled in the 
Army, where they very speedily forget 
all they have learut. 

Though such bold Sailors, the Al- 
gerines are very despicable as Navi- 
gators. Their chief Astronomer, 
Muley Hamet Ben Daoud, when I 
was there, who superintended aud reg- 
ulated the Hours of Prayer by the 
Moon and Stars, had not the skill to 
make a Sun-dial ; and in Navigation 
they cannot get beyond Pricking of a 
Chart, and distinguishing the Eight 
principal Points of the Compass. Even 
Chemistry, which was once the favour- 
ite Science of these people, is at pres- 
ent only applied to the Distilling of a 
little Rose-water. The Physicians 
chiefly study the Spanish Translation 
of Dioscoridcs (that was a Learned 
Leech in Olden Times) ; but the Fig- 
ures of the Plants and Animals are 
more consulted than the Descriptions : 
yet are these Knaves naturally Subtle 
and Ingenious ; wanting nothing but 
Application and Patronage to culti- 
vate and improve their Faculties. 
They are for the most part Predes- 
tinarians, and pay little regard to 
Physic, either leaving the Disorder to 
contend with Nature, or making use 
of Charms and Incantations. They, 
however, resort to the Ilammau, or 
Hot Bagnio (a great Sweating-bath, 
and a Sovereign Remedy for most 
Distempers), and have a few Specifics 
in general use. Thus, in Pleurisy 
and the Rheumatics they make several 
Punctures on the part affected with a 
Red-hot Needle ; and into simple Gun- 
shot Wounds they pour Fresh Butter 
almost boiling hot. The Prickly Pear 
roasted in Ashes is applied to Bruises, 
Swellings, and Inflammations ; and a 
dram or two of the Round Birthwort is 


esteemed the best remedy in the world 
for the Cholcr. But few Compound 
Medicines ; only, for that dreadful 
scourge the Plague (from which Lord 
deliver all Men not being Heathens !), 
they commonly use a Mixture of 
Myrrh, Saffron, Aloes, and Syrup of 
Myrtle-berries,— which does not hin- 
der ’em from dying like Sheep with 
the Rot. 

There are no Public Clocks here ; 
those contrivances, with Bells, being 
held an Impious Aping of Providence. 
And the only way you have of telling 
the Time is by the Fellows up in the 
Minarets calling ’em to Prayers. Some 
of the rich Agas have Watches, bought 
or stolen out of Europe ; but they are 
usually spoilt by the Women of the 
Harem playing with ’em. The Dey’s 
principal Wife, Zoraidc Khanum, is 
said to have boiled a large Gold 
Chronometer, made by Silvain of 
Paris, with Cream and Sweet Almonds. 
Yet does a remnant of their Ancestors’ 
old skill in Arithmetic and Algebra 
linger among ’em ; for whereas not 
One in Twenty Thousand can do an 
Equation (and Captain Blokes taught 
me, and I have since forgotton How), 
yet the Merchants arc frequently very 
dexterous in Reckoning by Memory, 
and have also a singular method of 
Numeration, by putting their hands 
into each other’s Sleeves, and touching 
one another with this or that Finger, 
or a particular Joint, each standing 
for a determined Sum or Number. 
Thus, without ere moving their lips, 
— and your Mussulman has a whole- 
some horror of squandering Words, — 
they conclude Bargains of the Great- 
est Value. 

None of the Women think them- 
selves completely Adorned till they 
have tinged the Lashes and the edges 
of their Eyelids with the powder of 
Lead-Ore. This they do by dipping 
a Bodkin of the thickness of a Quill 
into the Powder, and dragging it un- 
der the Eyelids. This gives their 
Eyes a Sooty colour, but is thought 
to add a Wonderful Grace to their 
Complexions. And was not this that 


210 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


which Jezebel did in the Ancient 
Time ? The Old Custom of plighting 
their Troth by drinking out of each 
other’s hand is the only Ceremony 
used by the Algerines at their Mar- 
riages. The bridegroom may put 
away his Wife whenever be pleases, 
upon the forfeiture of the Dowry he 
has settled upon her ; but he cannot 
afterwards take her again until she 
has been Re-married and Divorced 
from another Man. After all, the 
Wives are only held as a better class 
of Servants, that when their Toil is 
over become Toys. The greater part 
of the Moorish Women would be es- 
teemed Beauties even in England, and 
as Children they have the finest Com- 
plexions in the W orld ; but at Thirty 
they become Wrinkled old Women. 
For a Girl is often a Mother at Eleven, 
and a Grandmother at Twenty-two ; 
and their Lives being generally as long 
as Europeans, these Matrons often live 
to see Children of many Generations. 
They are desperately Superstitious, 
and hang the Figure of an Open Hand 
round the Necks of their Children ; 
and never an Algerine Pirate goes out 
of Port without such a Hand painted 
on the Stern, as a counter Charm to 
an Evil Eye. Truly there are some 
Christian Folks not much less foolish 
in their Superstitions ; and Rich and 
Poor among the Neapolitans carry a 
forked bit of Coral about with them, 
to conjure away this same Evil Eye, 
which they call Geitatura. 

They have a kind of Monks called 
Marabutts, who are supposed to lead 
an Austere Life, and pass their lives 
in counting a Chaplet of Ninty-nine 
Beads ; but who arc, in truth, Impudent 
Beggars, Thieves, and Profligates. 
And this is pretty well the Character 
of the whole body of Algerines, from 
the Dey in his Palace to his Father 
who sells Sheep’s Trotters. There 
are a few Grave People, in no con- 
stant Employ (that is to say, they 
have made their Fortunes by Murder 
and Piracy, and are now Retired), 
who speud the day, either in convers- 
ing with one another at the Barbers’ 


Shops, or at the Bazaars and Coffee- 
houses. But the greater part of the 
Moorish and Turkish Youth are the 
wildest of Gallants and Roysterers, 
and waste their time in the most un- 
seemly Fandangoes. 

Item . — These Marabutts arc no bet- 
ter than the Mountebanks I have seen 
at the Carnival of Venice or at South- 
wark Fair. One Seedy Mustapha 
tells me that a neighbouring Marabutt 
had a solid Iron Bar, which, upon 
command, would give the same Re- 
port and do as much Mischief as a 
Piece of Cannon. At Scteef, too, there 
was one famous for Vomiting Fire ; 
but the Renegado Baupwitz, who had 
seen him, assured me ’twas all a 
Trick ; that his Mouth did certainly 
seem to be all in a Blaze, while he 
counterfeited Violent Agony ; but that 
on close inspection it appeared that 
the Flames and Smoke with which he 
was surrounded arose from Tow and 
Sulphur, which he had contrived to 
kindle under his Ilyke. The most 
commendable thing I can find in the 
Algerine Character is the great re- 
spect they pay to their Dead. They 
don’t cram ’em into stifling little Grave- 
yards in the midst of crowded towns, 
as we do, to our injury and shame ; 
but have large Burial-grounds, at a 
good distance from their towns and vil- 
lages. Each Family has a particular 
Part, walled in like a garden, where 
the Bones of their Ancestors have re- 
mained undisturbed for many. Genera- 
tions. The Graves are all distinct 
and separate, and the space between 
is planted with Beautiful Flowers, 
bordered raund with Stone, or paved 
over with Tiles. The Graves of the 
Great People are likewise distinguished 
by Square Rooms with Cupolas built 
over them, which, being kept con- 
stantly clean, whitewashed, and beau- 
tified, nevertheless continue like the 
Hypocrites, and are but Sepulchres 
full within of nothing but Dead Men’s 
Bones. 

It happened one fine Autumnal 
Afternoon, that, my Services as Cym- 
bal-Player not being required until the 


216 


1 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


Dey’s Supper after Evening Prayers, 
I was wandering for mere Amuse- 
ment in some of the least-frequented 
Streets of the City ; which are here, 
for the sake of Shade, mere narrow 
Lanes, without any Pavement but 
Dust, and without a Door or Window 
from twenty yards to twenty yards. 
In fact they are but Passages between 
almost dead walls ; the Houses them- 
selves generally standing in the midst 
of the Gardens. Now I quitted the 
Street of Baba-zoun by the Street of 
the Shroffs, or Money-changers, de- 
signing to reach the Gate of the River ; 
but the Streets are all so much alike 
that I lost my Way, and went blun- 
dering on from one Lane into another, 
till I almost despaired of finding my 
Road back again. I should be too 
late for the Dey’s Supper, thought I ; 
and although Jack Dangerous was 
never given to Trembling, I began to 
feel very uncomfortable concerning 
the Notice that Mahomet Bassa, who 
was never known to have Pity on any 
Human Being, Man, Woman, or 
Child, might take of my Absence. 
For these accursed Algerines are most 
cruel in their Punishments. Trials 
arc very swift, and Sentence is always 
executed within half an hour after- 
wards. Small Offences are punished 
with the Bastinado, or the Rhinoceros 
Whip. For Clipping or Debasing the 
Public Coin the old Egyptian punish- 
ment of cutting off the Hands is in- 
flicted ; although the Dey, in one of 
his Furies, has been known to have the 
Base Money melted, aud poured down 
the Coiner’s Throat. If a Jew or a 
Christian is guilty of Murder, he is 
Burnt Alive without the gates of the 
City ; but for the same Crime the 
Moors and Arabs are either Impaled, 
liung up by the Neck over the Battle- 
ments of the City, or thrown upon 
Hooks fixed upon the Walls below, 
where they sometimes hang in Dread- 
ful Torments for Thirty and Forty 
hours together before they Expire. 
The Turks, however, out of respect 
for their Characters, are sent to the 
Aga’s house, where they are either 


Bastinadoed or Strangled ; and when 
the Women offend, they are not ex- 
posed to the populace, but are sent to 
a private House of Correction ; or, if 
the Crime be Capital, they are sewn 
up in a Sack, carried out to Sea, and 
Drowned. And for especial Criminals 
is reserved the Extraordinary Bar- 
barous punishment of Sawing Asun- 
der ; for which purpose they prepare 
two Boards, of the same length and 
breadth as the Unfortunate Person, 
and, having tied him betwixt them, 
begin sawing at the Head, and so pro- 
ceed till he is divided into Halves. 
’Tis said that Ivardinash, a person 
who was not long since Ambassador 
at the Court of England, suffered in 
this wise merely for maintaining, in 
the face of the Dey, that the Kiug of 
Great Britaiu had only One Wife. 

All these Grim Probabilities did I 
revolve in my mind, as the Sun Avent 
on sinking, and I could meet nothing 
but a few Rapscallion Boys that, when 
I strove to stammer out a few words 
of Arabic to ask my Way, laughed 
and jeered in their Impudent manner, 
and flung handfuls of Dust at me. 
Just as I was losing all Patience, and 
determined to Knock at the first door 
I came to, and make my state known 
at all hazards, there came upon me at 
the corner of a street the Figure of a 
Woman, Muffled up, as ’tis their 
fashion, in her Hyke and Burnouse, 
so that I could only see her Eyes, 
which were smeared over with the 
usual Black Stuff, but which seemed 
to have somewhat of a Yellowish 
Cast. I started, as if she were a 
Ghost just risen from the ground ; but 
indeed she had only just stepped out 
from a little Garden-door, that now 
stood Ajar. From the folds of her 
White Burnouse now came out a 
plump Hand, very Glossy, but very 
Black. She first laid her Finger on 
that part of her Hyke where her 
Mouth might be, to command me to 
Silence; then touched me on the Arm ; 
then pointed to a Latticed Window 
high up in the wall, to give me to under- 
stand that some one had been Watch- 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


ing me from there ; and then beckoned 
me to Follow her. I was wofully 
perplexed, and, thought I, “ The Dey 
will have no Cymbals to his Supper 
to-night, that’s certain.” Still, it is 
never to be said that J. D. ever shirked 
an adventure that promised aught of 
Love or Peril ; and had it been iuto 
the jaws of a Lion, I must have fol- 
lowed the Negro Emissary. After 
all, I reasoned, I was a proper-looking 
Fellow, although no longer in my First 
Youth, and my hair beginning to 
Grizzle somewhat ; but Love levels 
ranks, as my Lord Grizzle has it in 
Tom Thumb ; and I was, perhaps, 
not the first Frank Slave who was 
favoured by a beauteous Moorish 
Lady. A Moorish Beauty ! Why, 
this might be, after all, a Princess, a 
Sultana, a Turkish Khanum ! It 
turned out, however, far differently 
from what I had expected. Follow- 
ing the Slave, we quitted the. street 
and passed through a Porch, or Gate- 
way, which the Negress carefully 
locked after her. We now entered 
upon a Court, with Benches on either 
side, and paved very handsomely with 
Marble, covered in the middle with a 
rich Turkey Mat, and sheltered from 
the heat of the weather by a kind of 
Veil, expanded by Ropes from one side 
of the Parapet-wall, or Lattice of the 
Flat Roof, to the other. So into a 
little Cloister running round this Court, 
and up a little winding stone Stair- 
case into another Cloister or Upper 
Gallery. Then at a Door all covered 
with rich Filigree-work in Gold and 
Colours did the Negress knock ; and 
by and by a soft silvery Voice, of 
which the sound, somehow, made me 
start and tremble much more thau that 
of the Old Knight of Malta had done, 
said a few words in Arabic, and we 
went in. 

I found myself in a large square 
Apartment, with curious latticed 
Windows, through which the Evening 
Sunlight came, in the prettiest of pat- 
terns, and fell, like so many spangles 
disposed by an artful Embroiderer, 
upon the rich Carpet. A great Divan,. 


or stuffed Bench of Crimson Damask, 
ran all round the room, with many 
soft pillows and shawls upon it ; and 
on this Divan, upon the side opposite 
the door, sat an Eastern Lady, amaz- 
ingly Dressed. She had laid aside 
her Hyke, which was of white silk 
gorgeously striped with gold and crim- 
son Bars, and all dotted with Bullion 
Tassels, and sat in a tight-fitting jacket 
of Red Velvet, open in front, where 
you could see the Bosom of her Snowy 
Smock all blazing with Emeralds and 
Rubies. I had never seen so many 
of the latter kind of Jewels since the 
days of my Grandmother, in her 
Cabinet of Relics. Round her Waist 
was swathed a great Cashmerian 
Shawl, very rich and noble, and with 
a heavy Fringe ; and from among the 
folds peeped out a little Poniard with 
a jewelled Hilt, and a knife with a 
Gold and Mother-of-pearl Haft to cut 
her Victuals. She wore loose Trow- 
sers or Drawers of a very fine spun 
silk, covered with a raised pattern in 
gold thread ; that, as is the custom of 
the Moorish Women, were fastened 
at the Knee, and then fell in quite a 
torrent of Drapery down to her 
Ancles, nearly covering her pretty 
Feet. A sweet Fashion, and very 
Modest. As to the Feet themselves, 

- — the smallest, sure, that mortal 
woman ever had, — I could, rapid as 
was my survey, see that she wore no 
Hose ; but her tiny Toes were thrust 
into Slippers or Papow r shes of blue 
velvet, all heightened and enriched 
with Gold Orris and Seed Pearls. 
On her head was a dainty little cap, 
of the Fez Pattern, but of velvet in- 
stead of cloth, jewelled ; and from it 
hung a monstrous Tassel of Gold, 
which reached haif-w^ay down the 
Back. As for her Hair, it hung very 
nearly down to the ground, being all 
collected into one Lock, and bound 
and plaited with Ribbons ; and being 
thus adorned, w f ere tied close together 
above the Lock, the several corners of 
a Kerchief, made of thin flexible 
plates of Gold, cut through, and en- 
graved in imitation of Lace. In one 


218 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


hand she held a great Fan, of Pea- 
cocks’ Feathers, with a Mirror in the 
midst, and a handle of Gold, Emer- 
alds, and Agate, that would liave 
driven a Duke’s-Place Jew crazy to 
look at ; and in the other, — well, you 
know that Oriental Fashions are dif- 
ferent from ours, and that the Paynim 
nations have the strangest of Manners 
and Customs, — I declare that in the 
other Hand — the dexter one — the Lady 
held the Tube of a Tobacco-pipe, the 
which she was smoking with great 
Deliberation and apparent Relish. 
But ’twas a very different Pipe to 
what we are in the habit of seeing in 
England — having a Bowl of fine Red 
Clay encrusted with Gems, a long 
straight tube of Cherry-wood, and a 
Mouthpiece of Amber studded with 
Precious Stones. This Pipe they call 
a Chibook, and they smoke it much as 
we do our common Clay things ; but 
there’s another, which they call a Nar- 
gilly, like the Hubble-bubble smoked 
by the proud Planters in the Dutch 
East Indies. With the Nargilly, the 
Smoke passes first through Rose-water, 
to purify it ; and after passing through 
many snake-like coils of silk and wire 
tubing, the Smoker gulps it down 
bodily ; so that it goes into his Lungs, 
and must make them as sooty as a foul 
Chimney. Many of the Turks are so 
handy at this nasty trick, that they 
can make the Smoke they have swal- 
lowed come out at their ears, eyes, 
and nostrils ; but I envy them not 
such Mountebankery, and when I 
smoke my Pipe, am content to Blow 
a Cloud in a moderate and Christian 
manner. 

I have kept you so long describing 
this Eastern Lady’s Dress, that you 
must be growing impatient to know 
whether her Face matched in hand- 
someness with her Apparel ; but there 
was the Deuce of it ; for while I stood 
before her, staring and wondering 
over her splendid Habiliments, I 
could catch ne’er a glimpse of her 
Countenance, which was entirely con- 
cealed from view by the Veil they call 
a Formah , which is made of a very 


fine gauzy stuff, but painted in body- 
colour in a pattern so as to make it 
Opaque, and so artfully disposed as to 
hide the Face without shading any of 
the splendour of the Dress. And 
though I could not make out so much 
as the tip of the Lady’s Nose, I had 
a queer sensation that she was look- 
ing at me, nay, even that her eyes were 
twinkling in a merry manner under 
her Veil. And so I remained Dumb- 
foundered, quite uncertain as to the kind 
of Adventure that had befallen me. 
Had some Moorish or Turkish Dame 
designed only to Divert herself at the 
expense of a poor Christian Slave ? 
or was the Veiled Lady only some 
artful Adventuress of the Jewish, 
Armenian, or Cophtic Nation, of 
whom there were many here, affect- 
ing great magnificence in their Habits 
and Living ? 

Full Ten Minutes had the Lady so 
gazed upon me, I staring stupidly at 
her, and the Negress continuing to 
enjoin me to silence by putting her 
finger to her Lips. Then clapping her 
little hands together (I mean that the 
Lady did, for the Black Woman’s were 
sad Paws), in tumbles from a little 
door at the side of the Divan a Negro 
Urchin about eight years of age, very 
richly clad, who at her command 
brings Pipes and Coffee ; and, signs 
being made to me, I sat down on 
a couple of Pillows on the Ground, 
smoked a Chibook, emptied a Cup, not 
much bigger than an eggshell, of Cof- 
fee, — very Bitter and Nauseous here, 
for they give you the Dregs as well as 
the Liquor, — all the while staring at 
the Lady as though my Eyeballs would 
have started out of my Head. And 
by this time the sun had quite gone 
down, and as there is but little Twi- 
light in these parts, the Shade of Even- 
ing fell like a great black Pall over 
the Room ; so the little Black Urchin 
came tumbling in again with a couple 
of Lamps, which he set down before 
the Divan. These cast a very soft 
and rosy Light, passing through folds 
of Pink Silk ; and as soon as my eyes 
grew accustomed to ’em, I could see 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


that the Lady had raised her Veil, that 
she was looking npon me with a pair 
of Dark, Roguish, Twinkling Orbs, 
and that I was sitting in the presence 
of my kind Protectress, Lilias. 

“ What think you of this for an 
Opera Habit, goodman Cerberus ? ” 
cried she. “ Is this not much better 
than the Ballet of Orpheus ? And, 
goodness ! what strange Accoutrement 
have you, too, got into ? ” 

When my first ccstacies of Joy and 
Amazement were over, I explained to 
my Dear Patroness the reasons (none 
of my own choosing) for appearing in 
such a Garb as I Ihen wore; telling 
her how I had been Galley-Slave, and 
was now Cymbal Player, to the Un- 
believing Dey of Algiers ; and with 
great Humility did I ask after her 
Honored Parent, and seek to know by 
what uncommon Accident she, the erst 
Ballet Dancer in the King’s Opera- 
House at Paris, had come to be the 
tenant of this Outlandish House, 
and arrayed in this Heathen Habit. 
She answered me with that Candour 
and Simplicity which I ever found 
characteristic of her. Old Mr. Lovell 
was still alive, and in Paris ; and this 
is how his Daughter had become sep- 
arated from him. A very brilliant 
Engagement, as First Dancer, indeed, 
had been offered to her at the King’s 
Theatre at Palermo ; and, after long 
unsuccessful importunities addressed 
to the Gentlemen of the French King’s 
Chamber to cancel her Engagement, 
these instances, owing to the untiring 

influence of Cardinal de , had 

succeeded, and she was allowed to 
depart. Full willingly would she have 
taken her Papa with her as a Travel- 
ling Companion ; but the Old Gentle- 
man was now very Infirm, and averse 
from Moving ; and so Lilias was 
placed under the Guardianship of an 
old Spanish Lady, the Senora Satis- 
faciou de Mismar, who was the Pal- 
ermo Manager’s Aunt, made his en- 
gagements for him abroad, and played 
the Duenna or Singing Old Woman in 
his Comedies and Operas at home. 
Nothing could be properer than this 


arrangement, Donna Satisfacion being 
a personage of exceeding Discretion 
and Propriety of Behaviour ; so the 
two, with half a dozen more little 
Dancing-Girls that had been hired to 
fill inferior places, started for Bor- 
deaux, whence they designed to take 
shipping for Palermo. But by ill luck 
there was no Packet or Merchant Ves- 
sel bound for Sicily to be taken up 
for a long time ; and so they were fain 
to travel to Toulon, avoiding Mar- 
seilles, where the Plague then was 
very bad, and thence by way of Nizza 
to Genoa, where they found a Brig 
bound for Messina, which they thought 
would serve their turn. And, in truth, 
the poor souls found it but too well 
served ; for the Brig was captured off 
Bastia in Corsica by one of these dia- 
bolical Barbary Rovers, all on board’ 
made Slaves, and carried, not into 
Algiers, but into Sallee. There, after 
much suffering, poor Donna Satis- 
facion de Mismar died of a Distemper 
of the country, and poor Lilias was 
left without any other Protector than 
her own Virtue and a kind Providence. 

’Twas a terrible condition to be left 
in: Young, Fair, Friendless, and a 
Slave among these Moorish Barbari- 
ans. By Heaven’s Mercy, however, 
the dear Girl came to no harm. 
’Tis the custom, before the Christian 
W omen-captives are exposed for sale 
in the public Slave-Market, where 
they are Handled and put through 
their paces as though they were so 
many Cattle, for a Private Inspection 
of ’em to be made by the rich Persons 
of the place, who come and take Pipes 
and Coffee with the Merchant, glance 
over his Stock in a respectful Manner, 
and often strike a Bargain there and 
then. r lhe Girls for sale are appar- 
elled iu a sumptuous manner, bathed, 
perfumed, and trinketed out for their 
Private Y iew ; and their Captors seek 
to render ’em docile by_ giving ’em 
plenty of Sweetmeats. As if the in- 
tolerable pangs of Slavery were to be 
allayed by Lollipops ! It chanced that 
among the visitors to the Merchant’s 


House was one Ilamet Abdoollah. a 
220 


The Strange Adventures 

very Learned Man, a Physician by 
Trade, x»nd equally trusted by the Bey 
of Tunis, the Dey of Algiers, and him 
who reigned at Tripoli ; but who 
would not devote himself to the ser- 
# vice of any of these Potentates, but, 
loving an independent life, served all 
with equal fidelity, sometimes even 
travelling so far as the Capital of Mo- 
rocco, where he was in high favor 
with the Savage who calls himself 
Emperor of that country, which would 
be as piratical as the Barbary States, 
only it has less Seaboard. The father 
of this Physician had been quite as 
learned a Man as he, and by the name 
of Muley Abdoollah had travelled 
much in Western Europe, where by 
his Skill and Erudition he had gained 
so much consideration among the Po- 
lite as to be elected a Correspondent 
Member of the Iloyal Society of Eng- 
land and the Paris Academy of Sci- 
ences. Ilis son was one of the wisest 
and justest and most merciful of his 
Species, as you will presently have 
cause to admit. lie w^as struck at 
once by the Beauty, Intelligence, and 
Goodness of Lilias, and his humane 
heart recoiled at the thought of what 
her fate might have been among a 
people given up to Cruelty and Lust. 
He forthwith bought her of the Mer- 
chant at a fair price ; for although 
that crafty and rapacious Slave-Dealer 
would have made him pay Through 
the Nose for his Treasure, knowing 
the Physician to be a man of Great 
Wealth, he forbore in very shame from 
his extortion ; for Ilamet Abdoollah 
had but just saved his little son out of 
a Fever, after he had been given up 
by all the Ignorant Leeches of Sallee. 

So Lilias became the Bond-servant, 
but only so in name, to this Wise and 
Good Man. As her dearest wish w r as 
now to rejoin her Father, he under- 
took to send her back to France, and 
with that view did remove with his 
precious charge to Algiers, only ex- 
acting from her a promise that while 
she remained under his protection she 
would wear the Moorish Habit and 
pass as his Wife, so as to avoid Insult 


of Captain Dangerous. 

when she walked abroad. But of any 
thoughts of Love and Intrigue the 
Good Man w r as entirely free. He w r as 
wrapped up in the study of the Heal- 
ing Art, and troubled his head much 
more about Drugs, Cataplasms, and 
Electuaries, than about the Bow and 
Arrow's of Dan Cupid. Though why 
the God of Love should have been 
christened Daniel, it puzzles me to 
comprehend. This accounts for the 
manner in which I had found my 
dear Protectress caparisoned in every 
respect as a Moorish Dame. She 
told me that this was by no means the 
first time she had seen me, and that 
my being Cymbal-Player in the Dcy’s 
Musicians w r as very well known to 
her, and that her kind Guardian w as 
on the point of petitioning the Dey to 
release me from Servitude, when by 
accident she espied me from the Win- 
dow, and could not resist the tempta- 
tion of having me called in. 

But, in her sweet regard for what 
was due to Modesty and Decorum, 
she would have no Parley with me 
save in the presence of the Black 
slave, — ’tis true that she did not un- 
derstand a wmrd of English, — and di- 
rectly she had come to an end of her 
Narrative, she sent the Tumbling Ur- 
chin to inquire whether the Physician 
had come home, the part of the House 
she occupied being quite separate and 
distinct from his. The smutty little 
Imp comes back bringing word that 
Ilamet w'ould wait upon her presently; 
and anon, after discreetly tapping at 
the door, he came in, a grave, Rever- 
end Man, in a flowing Robe of Sad- 
colored Taflfety, and with a long White 
Beard and Green Turban ; for he had 
made the Mecca Pilgrimage, and yet 
abstained from assuming the title of 
Hadji, to which he was entitled. He 
spoke very good French, and even a lit- 
tle English (learned from his Papa) ; 
and when I was made known to him, 
asked for news of Dr. Mead and Sir 
Hans Sloane, although I could tell 
him but little of that worthy and de- 
ceased Gentleman. 

“ Happy is the Wooing that is not 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


long a Doing,” they say ; and, by this 
time, you will probably have discov- 
ered that I Loved Lilias Lovell very 
dearly. ’Twas no Ramping, Ranti- 
poling, Fiery-Furnace kind of Calf 
Love on my part, but a matured and 
sensible admixture of Gratitude and 
Sincere Affection. I scorn to conceal 
that although I knew myself to be by 
Lineage worthy the hand of a Gentle- 
man’s Daughter, I was aware that, by 
the Meanness of the condition under 
which I was first known to the 
Lovell Family, a Gulf yawned be- 
tween their Estate and mine ; and 
that, warm and devoted as was my 
Love for the Pretty Little Creature I 
had saved from the Flames, I could 
but deem that she reckoned the 
Humane Dog Cerberus of the Opera 
Ballet as of no greater account than a 
real Doggish Mastiff. But to my ex- 
treme Amazement and Felicity, this 
was not so. I was beloved by this 
amiable Young Person, to whom Am- 
bassadors were proud to go on their 
knees, and whom Gentlemen of the 
Chamber would have covered with 
Diamonds. With a charming frank- 
ness, blushing and stammering, yet 
with Virginal Pride, she confessed 
that she was enamoured of me, and, 
if Fortune were propitious, would 
gladly be my Wife. I could at first 
scarcely realize the possibility of such 
great and unmerited Happiness ; for 
well did I know the disparity in Age 
that existed between us — how Rough 
and Weather-beaten was I ; and she, 
how Tender, Delicate, and Good ! 
“ But does not the Ivy twine round 
the Oak ?” quoth the Physician, as he 
smote me cheerfully on the Shoulder. 
And behold, now, gnarled and bat- 
tered old Jack Dangerous, with this 
delicious little Parasite creeping toward 
and Nestling Round him. 

Chapter the Twenty-Sixth and 
Last. 

OF MY SERVICE UNDER THE GREAT TURK 
AS A BASHAW ; OF MY ADVENTURES 
IN RUSSIA AND OTHER COUNTRIES; 


AND OF MY COMING nOME AT LAST 

AND BUYING MY GRANDMOTHER’S 

HOUSE (WHICH IS NOW MINE) IN 

nANOVER SQUARE.- 

’Twas the advice of the Good 
Physician, that, to prevent Accidents, 
Ave should be Married without Delay ; 
for in these hot countries you are here 
to-day and gone to-morrow, and no 
one can tell what may happen. Dif- 
ficulties almost insurmountable, ’tis 
true, seemed to stand in the way of 
our Union ; butHamet Abdoollah was 
able to act almost a Magician’s part 
to bring about our Happiness. I was 
for the time being bestowed in his 
House, and the next morning the 
Physician hies him to the Dey, who 
was in a Fury about me, and was 
threatening all kinds of Bowstrings 
and Bastinadoes. But his Highness 
happening likewise to be suffering 
from Toothache, and as a Man with 
a Raging Tooth would give all the 
Treasures of Potosi to be quit of his 
Agony, the Physician promised to 
Relieve him forthwith if he would 
grant his Suit. The Dey promised 
him any thing he could wish for, and 
so Ilamet Abdoollah cures him with 
a little Phial full of nothing but Tar 
Balsam. ’Tis but just to the Mussul- 
mans to say, that when they have 
once given their Word of Honour, 
they keep it with Extreme Rigour ; 
so that when the Physician begged 
pardon for me, and License to pur- 
chase me out of the Dey’s service and 
take me into his own, the Suit was 
very cheerfully granted. Joyfully 
Ilamet Abdoollah repairs to us again, 
with a Firman under the Dey’s own 
Signet granting me my Liberty ; and 
that very forenoon my silver Collar, 
Anklets, and Manacles were stricken 
off, — the Physician returning them to 
the Dey’s Treasury, — and I was no 
longer a Slave. 

Although there is no Man alive who 
mislikes Popery and its Superstitious 
Practices more than does J. D., there 
is one order of Nuns and one of 
Monks for whose members I entertain 


222 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


a profound Love and Reverence. Of 
She-Religious, I mean those Blessed 
Sisters of Charity who go about the 
World doing good, braving Sickness, 
succouring Misery, assuaging Hunger, 
drying up Tears, and smiling in the 
Face of Death. God bless those Holy 
Women, say I, wheresoever they are 
to be found ! and in our own Pro- 
testant country of England, why 
lihould we not have similar Sisterhoods 
of Women of Mercy, or Deaconesses, 
bound by no rigid vows, and suffering 
no ridiculous Penances of Stripes and 
Macerations, but obeying only the 
call of Religious Charity, and going 
Quietly and Trustfully about their 
Master’s Business ? Of Ile-Mouks, 
I mean the Fathers of the Work of 
Redemption, or Redemptorists, whose 
sole business it is to travel about Beg- 
ging and Praying of the Rich for 
money to Ransom poor Christian 
bodies out of Slavery ; which is a bet- 
ter work, I think, than praying for 
the deliverance of their Souls out of 
Purgatory. These Redemptorist Fa- 
thers have a permanent Station and 
Correspondence at all the Piratical 
Ports of the Barbary Coast ; and at 
stated times, when they have gathered 
enough Money to redeem a certain 
number of Christians, a body of the 
Fraternity visit the Station, take away 
their Sanctified Merchandise, and by 
their Humble and Devout Carriage, 
and exemplary Poverty of Life, extort 
admiration even from the Bloodthirsty 
Heathens. 

Now at Algiers, about this time, 
there was suffered to dwell an old 
Religious of this Order, Le Pore Le- 
fanu, — who for his Virtues and Piety 
was esteemed even by the Mussulman 
Ulemas, and was thought a good deal 
more of than any of their Marabutts 
or Santons, which is a name they give 
to a kind of wandering Idiots, who, 
the Crazier they are, are thought the 
more deserving of Superstitious Ven- 
eration. Pore Lefanu was nearly 
ninety years of age, and had dwelt 
among these Barbarians for full sixty 
years of his Life, passing his time in 


Meditation, Prayer, and the Visitation 
of the Sick and Needy, both among 
the Unbelievers and the Christian 
Slaves, and at the same time transact- 
ing all necessary business with the 
Dcy’s Head-men for periodically re- 
deeming those that were in Bondage. 
Our good Physician had a profound 
esteem for this Revereud Person, and 
often visited him ; ami now it was 
through his Ministry that Lilias and 
I were to be made One. I had for- 
gotten to say, that my departed Saint 
was of the Communion opposite to 
mine ; but iu a land of Pagans ’tis 
as well to forget all differences between 
Papists and Protestants, and to re- 
member only that we are Christians. 
Pore Lefanu had been ordained a 
Secular Priest before he had become a 
Regular Monk, and he told me that 
if I had any Conscientious Scruples 
as to the Husband being a Protestant 
and the Wife of another way of Think- 
ing, I could have the marriage done 
over again in whatever way I thought 
proper on our return to Europe. But 
I was in far too great a Hurry to be 
Married to look too narrowly which 
way the Cat jumped ; and a Romish 
Wedding is surely better than jump- 
ing over a Broomstick, which, unless 
we had adopted the uncouth Moresque 
custom, would have been all the Cere- 
mony of Matrimony we could have 
had. So Pere Lefanu came privately, 
to avoid Gossip, to the Physician’s 
House, and Lilias Lovell and John 
Dangerous were made One in the 
French Language, the contracting 
parties being English, the Bridge- 
groom’s best man a tawny Mahometan 
Moor, and the only Bridesmaid a 
Black Negress. 

Our Honeymoon (we continuing to 
dwell iu the House of the good Hamet 
Abdoollah) was one of unmixed Joy 
and Gladness ; but ’twas too complete 
to last long, and soon came a black 
Storm to lash into fury the calm sur- 
face of our Life’s Lake. Seized with 
a Malignant Distemper, and after but 
three days’ Sickness, the good Hamet 
Abdoollah died. Ilis pillow was 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


smoothed by our reverent hands, and 
with his dying breath he blessed us. 

I know not if there be any Saints in 
the Mussulman Church ; but if ever a 
man deserved Canonisation from what- 
soever Communion he belonged to, I 
am sure it was Hamet Abdoollah, the 
Moorish Physician. 

His Skill in Medicine had brought 
him great Wealth, of which, although 
he was always distributing Alms to the 
Poor, he left a considerable Portion 
behind him. In his last moments he 
sent for the Cadi and Ulema of his 
Quarter, for his will to be made, or at 
least to assure them by word of mouth 
of his Testamentary Intentions, which 
among this People would have been 
as religiously carried out as though he 
had written them. But, alas ! when 
the Cadi and the Ulema arrived, he 
was speechless, and died without word 
or sign of his Wishes. 

His Relations came forthwith to 
administer to his Effects, and (if truth 
be not unpalatable to English Heirs, 
that often do the same thing) to fight 
and squabble over the administration 
thereof. A pretty Noise and Riot 
they made : now weeping and howling 
over the Corse ; now bursting open 
Trunks, wrenching Trinkets from 
each other, striving to convey away 
Garments and Furniture, and even 
tearing down the hangings of Rich 
Stuff. Only the Harem, where my 
one True Wife was, remained inviolate 
from these Harpies ; but me they over- 
whelmed with the most injurious In- 
vectives and accosted by the foulest 
epithets, calling me Infidel, Pig, 
Giaour Dog, Frankish Thief, and the 
like, telling me that I had fattened 
long enough on the Substance of a 
True Believer, with the like oppro- 
brious speeches. I let them have 
their way, only giving them to under- 
stand that the first Man who should 
attempt to cross the Threshold of my 
Harem, it were better for him that he 
never had been Born. 

Soon, however, came a greater Heir 
at Law than any of these, to take 
possession of the Dead Man’s heritage. 

22 


The news of Hamet Abdoollah’s de- 
cease had come to the ears of the Dey ; 
and straightway he sends down a 
strong guard of Coglolies to Seize all 
in his Name, specially enjoining the 
Bullock Bashee in command to put 
the big Christian Slave (meaning my- 
self) in Fetters, and equally secure, 
although with lighter bonds, the fair 
Frankish Woman, meaning my dear 
Wife Lilias. All this was no sooner 
said than done. The Rough Soldiers 
burst into the House, and to prevent any 
misunderstanding about me, a Cloth 
(for which I was quite unprepared) 
was thrown over my head from Be- 
hind ; and while I was yet struggling 
to free myself from this blinding In- 
cumbrance, the Gyves were passed 
over my Wrist and Ancles. And 
then they removed the Cloth, and, 
laden with heavy Chains, I had to be- 
hold in Despair their Invading the 
Sanctity of my Ilarem, and tearing 
therefrom my Lilias. In vain did I 
Shout, Threaten, Grind my Teeth, 
Implore, Promise, and strive to Tear 
my Hair. They only Laughed ; and 
one Brutish Coglolic made as though 
to strike me with the fiat of his Sabre, 
when I out with my foot, all fettered 
as it was, and gave the Ruffian a blow 
on the Jaw, the which, by the momen- 
tum given by the Iron, I thought had 
stove it in. This much infuriated hi3 
Savage Companions ; and I doubt not 
but that they would have finished me, 
but the Bullock Bashee, who had 
orders to the contrary, constrained 
them to stay their hand. 

What became of my dear Lilias, I 
was not allowed to know. She was 
borne away, shrieking and calling on 
me, with Streaming Eyes, for help ; 
and I saw her no more. Myself they 
dragged downstairs ; and when we 
were come into the street, flung me, 
fettered as I was, over the back of an 
Artillery Horse, where I lay, face 
downwards, and in a kind of stupor, 
as listless as a Miller’s Sack ; and so, 
my Gyves jingling and clattering, I 
was conveyed away. 

The cruel and remorseless Dey of 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


Algiers I saw no more. Some spark 
of shame there might perchance he in 
the Ruffian’s Breast that forbade him 
to gaze upon the man he had pardoned 
and enfranchised, and had now traitor- 
ously Kidnapped. I suppose that in 
the Thieves’ philosophy of this Fellow 
he reasoned that, if promises are to be 
kept to Live Men, there is no need to 
keep them unto Dead ones ; that he 
was released from all his obligations 
by the demise of Ilamet Abdoollah ; 
and that, as the Physician could not 
cure him of the Toothache again, if 
he chanced to get it, *twas idle to con- 
tinue bestowing Favours where no 
Benefits could be derived. 

Into a wretched Dungeon of the 
Arsenal was poor J. Dangerous thrust, 
with naught for victuals but Musty 
Beans and Stinking Water. When I 
had been here, groaning and gnashing 
my teeth, for seven days, — which 
seemed to me thrice seven years, — a 
Rascally Fellow that I knew to be a 
Scribe belonging to the Divan of the 
Dey comes into my Dungeon to tell 
me that the Packet-ship has come in 
from Marseilles, and that in answer 
to my letter to Monsieur Foscue, that 
Merchant sends word that he knows 
nothing at all about me ; to which the 
Rascally Scribe adds, in the Lingua 
Franca, that I was no doubt an Im- 
postor who had trumped up a con- 
venient Fable of my being a Gentle- 
man and having Correspondents who 
would be answerable for my Ransom 
in Europe, in order to get better food 
and treatment until the real truth could 
be known. Whereupon he tells me 
that his Highness the Dey had not yet 
quite made up his mind as to whether 
he shall have me Impaled or merely 
Flayed Alive, and so slams the door 
in my Face. 

In this Horrible Dungeon did I con- 
tinue for seven days more, mostly 
grovelling on the ground, my face 
downwards, and praying for Deliver- 
ance or Death. I had a mind to dash 
my Brains out against the slimy walls 
of the Cell, but was only stayed by the 
thought of my Lilias. Twas always 
15 22 


night in this abominable Hole, which 
was lighted only by a hole in the roof, 
about four inches square, and which 
gave not into the open air but into a 
Corridor above. But on the fifteenth 
night of my Captivity, for I judged it 
so by the utter darkness, the door of 
the Dungeon opened, and the Blessed 
Old Man that was a Redemptorist 
Father appeared, bearing a Lantern. 

44 You have that about you, my son,” 
says he, 44 which should be a sign that 
you are a trusted Agent of Holy Mo- 
ther Church. Can you show it ? ” 

I pointed with one of my fettered 
hands to my Breast, and made signs 
for him to search for that he was in 
quest of. The which he did, and after 
reverently kissing the Parchment I had 
between the Glasses, restored it to me. 

44 You have been most basely en- 
treated,” he continued. 44 Monsieur 
Foscue sent ample Funds for your 
Ransom, and his Eminence is most 
anxious for your safety ; but the cruel 
Moorish Prince who governs this un- 
happy city, after taking the money, 
feigned that you had made your escape 
from the Arsenal, designing to keep 
you here in Chains and Hunger until 
you should Perish.” 

He paused for a moment, for his 
Great Age made him very feeble, and 
then continued : 

44 1 can deliver you from this Abode 
of Misery ; but it is not in my power, 
my son, to give you entire Deliverance. 
Would that I could ! You have but 
to follow me to the Quayside, where 
you will find a boat to convey you on 
board a Turkish Merchant-ship, that 
to-morrow morning weighs anchor for 
Constantinople. You will still be a 
Slave to the Captain, but to your own 
ingenuity I leave it to obtain complete 
Freedom.” 

44 And my Wife — my dear, dear Lil- 
ias ? ” I asked. 

The Ancient Man shook his head. 

44 1 can do nothing to bring you to- 
gether again. She cannot follow you 
to Stamboul ; but by Perseverance, 
and in Time, you may be restored to 
her.” 

5 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


“Time !” I cried out in bitter des- 
peration. “Time! O Father ! Iam 
growing an old man. She is the stay 
and prop of my Life ; she is the one 
ray of sunshine cast on a Black and 
Wicked Career ! And she is taken 
from me by these Butchers ! and I am 
to see her no more ? What care I for 
Hunger and Chains, and a Dungcon- 
tloor for a Pallet ? They have been 
familiar to me from my earliest youth. 
If I am not to have my Lilias’s sweet 
companionship again, I will remain 
here in this Hole, and die like a Dog, 
as I am.” 

“ Take comfort, my son,” said the 
Rcdemptorist Monk. “ Time and 
Perseverance may, I repeat, enable 
you to attain your heart’s desire. 
Meanwhile, console yourself with the 
assurance that the Fair and Good Wo- 
man, who is your Wife, is out of peril 
from lawless men. By the same Packet- 
ship that brought the Letlers from Mon- 
sieur Foscue came a Sum sufficient 
Doubly to Ransom the Young Woman. 
The benignant protection of his Em- 
inence has been extended to her, and 
she will in a few days return to France, 
and to her Father.” 

“ But can I not see her ? — cannot I 
touch her Hand ? — can I not press her 
Lip ? — for one brief moment and for 
the last time ? ” 

“ It is impossible,” answered the 
Monk. “ She is watched, both by Day 
and Night, by zealous agents of the 
Dey, and I have no means of access 
to her. ’T would be death both to you 
and to myself were I to seek to bring 
about a meeting between you. Even 
now the precious moments are wasting 
away. In another hour the Guard 
will be changed, and your Escape im- 
possible.” 

“ And how is it possible now ? ” I 
asked. “And will no one come to 
Hurt though my evasion ? ” 

“ It is possible,” he repeated. “ You 
have to walk but from hence to the 
Outer Gate and the Quayside. Im- 
mediately you have departed, the Body 
of a poor Christian Slave, of your age 
and stature, who died this morning at 

2 


the Arsenal, will be conveyed he7*e, 
and garnished with your chains. The 
Dey will be told that you have died in 
Prison. He loves not to look upon 
the faces of those he has murdered, 
and will take the word of the Aga, 
who is in our pay. Come ! there is 
not an instant to be lost. Here is the 
key to your Fetters. Unlock them, 
and follow me.” 

With a heart that was now elated 
with the prospect of Deliverance, and 
now sunk at the thought that I was 
still to be separated from my Lilias, I 
did as the good lvedemptorist bade me, 
and casting my accursed Shackles from 
me in a heap, limped slowly forth — 
for the Iron had wofully galled me. 
Outside the Dungeon-door stood a 
couple of Coglolies, with their Turban- 
cloths let down over their faces to serve 
as Masks, who swiftly unlocked what 
Doors remained between us and the 
Sea Rampart. The Monk pressed my 
Hand, gave me his Blessing, bidding 
me hope for Better Times, and disap- 
peared. Guided by the Coglolies, and, 
indeed, half supported by them, I was 
put into a Boat waiting at the Quay- 
side, as the Monk had told me, and 
ten minutes’ hard pulling brought us 
alongside a large craft, on board which, 
I being so weak, they were fain to hoist 
me with Ropes. By this time I had 
sunk into a kind of Lethargy, and be- 
ing conveyed below and put into a cot 
in the Master’s Cabin, fell into a slum- 
ber which lasted for many hours. 

The Captain of this ship was an 
English Renegado, named Sparkenhoc. 
He had served as Midshipman and 
Master’s Mate in a King’s ship ; but 
having been, as he conceived, unjustly 
Broken for hot words that passed be- 
tween him and the Captain, — this took 
place at Gibraltar, — had deserted, and 
hid himself on board a Merchant Brig 
bound for Tangier. At last, being 
fond of a Roving Life (and having the 
misfortune to kill the Captain of the 
Merchant Brig in a dispute concerning 
some Bullocks they were shipping), 
he had turned Mussulman ; and after 
living some time among the Buccaneers 
6 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous . 


of the Riff, had come to Algiers, and 
been made Captain of a Merchantman 
trading to the Dardanelles, and doing 
a bit of Piracy when opportunity served. 
’Twas full five-and-twenty years since 
he had Run from the King of Great 
Britain’s service ; and although his 
Blue Eyes and enormous Red Whis- 
kers still gave him somewhat of a Sax- 
on appearance, he had very nearly 
forgotten his Mother Tongue, and only 
retained English enough to enable 
him to mingle a few Billingsgate 
Oaths with his barbarous Levantine 
Lingo. 

This fellow, whom I heartily des- 
pised, for he had kept all the Vices of 
his former Religion, and had acquired 
none of the Virtues of his new one, 
was civil enough to me, and informed 
me that all he could do for me, in re- 
turn for the Bribe he had received from 
his Employers, would be to deliver me 
to a Slave Merchant at Constantinople, 
who would place me out in Domestic 
Service where I should not be ill- 
treated. But he very strongly advised 
me to turn Turk or Rcnegado, as he 
himself was, saying, that in such a case 
he would land me perfectly free at the 
Porte, where I should doubtless find 
some profitable Employment. This I 
scornfully refused ; whereupon he 
shrugged his Shoulders, and said that 
I w as a Fool, but might possibly think 
Better of it, in Time. 

After three weeks’ coasting among 
the Isles of the Grecian Archipelago, 
and so into the Sea of Marmora, we 
steered into the Bosphorus ’twixt the 
Castles of Europe and Asia ; and the 
same night the Slave-Dealer comes off 
in a private Caique, — as the Turks 
call their Canoes, — and the Renegado 
delivered me up to him. I was taken 
to his House at Galata, where I w as 
kept very close for two or three w^eeks, 
and was then sold to a Merchant of 
Damascus in Asia, that had come to 
Constantinople with the Autumn Car- 
avans, to dispose of his cargo of Silk 
and Attar of Roses — a very fine and 
subtle Perfume, one drop of which is 
sulTiciciit to scent an entire House. 


’Twas in the autumn of the year 1759 
that so I came to Damascus, and for ten 
years did I remain in that city, — all 
the time without hearing one Avord 
from my dear Wife. Had I been in 
the Capital, where Foreign Ambassa- 
dors reside, I could not, as a Christian, 
be detained in Slavery ; that being 
guarded against by Treaties between 
the CroAvn of Great Britain and the 
Sublime Porte. But in this remote 
part of the Empire, these and many 
other worse enormities Avere possible ; 
and I remained as one Dead and Buried. 
To a feAv English and French Travel- 
lers passing through Damascus did I 
tell my piteous Tale, and entreat their 
help ; but the account that I gave of 
myself Avas so rambling and confused, 
and contained, I could but confess it, 
so many Incredible Particulars, that I 
could plainly see no one believed my 
Tale, or accounted me as aught but a 
lialf-mad FcIIoav that had run aAvay for 
some misdeed from a Ship in port on 
the Coast of Syria, and Avas now trying 
to cadge Sympathy for a Pretended 
Grievance. At last I gave up com- 
plaining. SloAvly, but surely, my 
memory of my former life began to 
Decay, and even the knowledge of 
mine OAvn Language faded aAvay, and 
became Aveaker and Aveaker every day. 
I dressed, I ate, I drank, I slept in the 
Eastern F ashion, and in all but religion 
I was a Turk. 

MeanAvhile I had gained in the fav- 
our of my Master. He Avas about 
mine own age when he purchased me, 
and we greAv old Together. At first I 
was employed as a mere Menial, in 
carrying of Bales and Packages, and 
tending of Camels ; but by degrees I 
was promoted to be his Warehouse- 
man, Clerk, Cashkeeper, and at last 
his Partner. In that capacity he sent 
me to manage a large silk-plantation 
of his in the Lebanon ; and after tAvo 
years of that work I left him W'ith a 
fortune of no less than five hundred 
Purses of Gold (about 20,000Z. of our 
Money) , to set up on my OAvn account 
in the City of Broussa. He made no 
attempt (nor had he at any time done 


227 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


so) to combat my Religious Scruples, 
but counselled me to behave in all things 
outwardly as a Turk; and if anything 
was said of my being in countenance 
a Frank (though I was swarthy enough 
from my Long Journey ings), to ac- 
count for it by saying that 1 was an 
Affghan born, out of India. He died 
very soon after I settled at Broussa, 
and the secret of my being a Christian 
died with him. It is true that, for 
mere Policy’s sake, I did go through 
the Mummeries of outward Mahome- 
tans, and had my Rosary and my 
Prayer-carpet like other Merchants of 
Broussa ; but I scornfully deny that I 
was initiated, or submitted to, any 
Heathenish Rites ; and I am ready to 
maintain now, Cut, Thrust, or Back- 
sword, that I was then as stanch and 
leal a Protestant as I am now. 

Under the name of Gholab Hassan, 
of Afghanistan, and a True Believer, 
I prospered exceedingly, almost en- 
tirely forgetting my own country. 
’Tis true I always preserved an affec- 
tionate remembrance of my dear Wife 
Lilias; but she seemed to me in the 
guise of some Departed Angel, whom 
I had been privileged to behold but for 
a Short and Transient Period. Among 
these Pagans, as is well known, Pol- 
ygamy is permitted ; but that is nei- 
ther here nor there ; and I was now 
an Old, Old Man. 

’Tis ten years since, namely, a.d. 
1770, that a great Insurrection against 
the Authority of the Porte, or rather 
of the Bashaw of the Province, who 
had been laying on the Taxes with 
somewhat too heavy a hand, broke out 
in Broussa. The infuriate Populace 
burnt the House of the Bashaw about 
his ears, plundered the Bazaar, and 
were proceeding to further extremities, 
when, a puff of my old Martial Spirit 
reviving within me, I collected a trusty 
band of Porters and Camel-drivers, 
rallied the Turkish Troops, who were 
flying in all directions, reformed them, 
scattered the Insurgent Mobile, and 
did (I promise you) speedy execution 
on some Scores of them. The Insur- 
rection was very speedily subdued, and 


all Broussa was fdled with the praises 
of my Valor and Discretion. The Ba- 
shaw was a poor Good-natured kind 
of Creature, Brave enough, but so Fat 
that when he mounted on Horseback 
they were obliged to put one of the 
Pillows of his Divan on the pummel of 
his saddle to keep his Stomach steady. 
An end, however, was put to the dis- 
comfort he suffered through Corpu- 
lence, by the arrival, three weeks after 
the suppression of the Insurrection, of 
a Tartar Courier, who brought with 
him a Bowstring and a Firman from 
the Grand Seignor. By means of the 
Bowstring, the Fat Bashaw was then 
and there strangled, — for they do things 
in a very off-hand manner in Turkey, 
— and when the Firman was opened 
by his Vizier it was found to contain, 
not his own nomination to the Bashaw- 
lik, which he fondly expected, but the 
appointment of the Merchant Gholab 
Ilassan, that is to say, John Danger- 
ous, that is to say your Humble Serv- 
ant, to the vacant Post, and command- 
ing my immediate attendance at the 
Porte to receive investiture with the 
Three Horse-tails of Office. 

I was at once saluted as Gholab 
Bashaw, and the next day set forth 
amidst great Acclamations, and in 
sumptuous state, for Constantinople. 
Arrived there, I was handsomely 
lodged in a Palace close to the Old 
Seraglio, and admitted to no less than 
three solemn Audiences with the Com- 
mander of the Faithful, the Caliph A1 
Islam, the Padishaw of Roum, the 
Great Turk himself. 

I could not help smiling at myself, 
now arrayed in all the pomp and glory 
of an Exalted Functionary, and in the 
true Turkish fashion. ’Tis a custom 
(through Ignorance of those parts) 
with the Limners of Europe to por- 
tray all Osmanlis with long Beards ; 
and, for truth, as a Merchant at 
Broussa, I had a great grizzled one of 
most Goatish appearauce ; but among 
the Bashaws and all those engaged 
in the Military Service of the Grand 
Seignor, or holding high Employments 
in the Seraglio, they wear only a lierce 


The Strange Adventures 

and martial pair of Whiskers. The 
most distinguishing sign of a true 
Mussulman is, after all, his Sarik or 
Turban, made in two parts, namely a 
Bonnet, and the Linen that is wrapped 
round it. The former a kind of Cap, 
red or green, without Brims, and 
quilted with Cotton. About this they 
roll several folds of Linen Cloth ; and 
it is a particular art to know how to 
give a Turban a good air ; it being a 
trade with ’em, as the Selling of Hats 
is with us. The Emirs, who boast of 
being descended from the race of Ma- 
homet, wear a turban all green ; but 
that of the common Turks is red, with 
a white border, so distinguishing ’em 
from the Christians. Next I wore 
great long Breeches of a ’broidered 
stuff, and a Shirt of fine soft calico, 
with wide Sleeves, but no Wristbands 
or Collar ; and over this a Cassock or 
Vest of fine English Cloth, reaching 
to the ancles, and buttoned with but- 
tons of gold, about the bigness of a 
peppercorn. This w T as tied with a 
broad Sash or Girdle, which went 
thrice round the waist, with the ends 
hanging down before, and two hand- 
some Tassels. Over all this another 
Garment, richly laced, and lined with 
Furs of the Martin or the Badger. 
In my Girdle a Dagger, about the size 
of a case-knife, the handle curiously 
wrought, and adorned with Precious 
Stones. And as the Turkish tailors 
make no pockets to their vestments, 
Purse, Handkerchief, Tobacco-box, 
and things of that nature must 
needs be put into the Bosom, or thrust 
under the Girdle. Instead of Shoes, 
a pair of Slippers of yellow leather ; 
which, whenever you enter a Mosque 
or the presence of a Superior, you 
must put *off on the threshold. This 
custom makes the soles of a Turk’s 
feet always ready for the application 
of the Talack, or Bastinado, from 
which argument neither high nor low 
are exempt. 

Item . — The Women here very richly 
dressed, but sad Gossips, and a Lazy, 
Lolloping kind of creatures ; which 
they must needs be, poor souls, seeing 


of Captain Dangerous . 

that they have no sort of Education, 
and are kept mostly in seclusion, talk- 
ing of scandal, sucking of sugar-plums, 
showing their brave apparel to each 
other, and thumming upon the Man- 
dolin. A galloping, dreary, dull place 
indeed is a Turkish Harem. As to 
the qualities of the mind, the Turkish 
women waut neither Wit, Good Sense, 
nor Tenderness ; but the constraint 
that is put upon ’em, and the jealous 
eye with which they are guarded, 
makes ’em go a great way iu a little 
time, and make an ill use of the Lib- 
erty which is sometimes granted them. 
The old women-slaves of the Ar- 
menian and Jew Merchants, who are 
the confidantes of the Turkish women, 
enter their apartments at all hours, 
under the pretence of bringing them 
Jewels, and often favour their Amours 
with brisk young fellows. The usual 
hour for intrigue is the hour of morn- 
ing and evening Prayers, when the 
Husbands are away at the Mosques. 
In case of Discovery the Turks are 
masters of the Lives of their Wives ; 
and if they have been convicted in 
form, they are sewn up in Sacks, and 
thrown into the Sea. And even if a 
Guilty Woman’s life is spared, she is 
condemned to marry her Gallant, who 
is sentenced to die, or must turn Ma- 
hometan, supposing him to be a Chris- 
tian. The least punishment for a man 
who has broken the Seventh Com 
mandent is to ride through the streets 
upon an Ass, with his face towards 
the Tail, to receive a certain number 
of Blows upon the Soles of his Feet, 
and to pay a Fine in proportion to his 
Estate. 

But though a duly-invested Bashaw 
of Three Tails, I was not fated to re- 
main long in that Capacity. For once, 
however, my Destiny, in subjecting 
me to Change, played me a kind in- 
stead of a spiteful Turn. Going to 
visit the French Ambassador, who 
was then in high favor at the Porte, I 
found there, living under the protec- 
tion of his Family, a Lady, who was 
no other than my dear Wife Lilias, 
and with her a Daughter, called after 


The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. 


her own name, who was now twelve 
years of age. Iler History, as she re- 
lated it to me, was brief, but amazing. 
Both her Father and the Cardinal died 
about two years after her return from 
Captivity ; but she found a new guar- 
dian in my old friend Captain Night, 
or Don Ercolo Sparafucile di San Lo- 
renzo, the Knight of Malta, who had 
retired from that Island to end his 
days in France. She was enabled to 
cheer the declining years of that Gal- 
lant Gentleman, who had preserved a 
lively remembrance of his old Protege , 
Jack Dangerous ; and when he died, 
left her the whole of his large fortune. 
All these years she had remained in 
a dreadful state of uncertainty, till, 
through the kind offices of the French 
Minister of Police, she was made ac- 
quainted with the last Dying avowal 
of a Pirate Rencgado, named Spark- 
euhoe, who had expired at the Gal- 
leys of Marseille, and stated that, in 
the year 1759, lie had conveyed a re- 
fugee Christian Slave from Algiers to 
Constantinople, where he had been 
sold to a Merchant of Damascus. In 
the almost desperate hope of discover- 
ing some Tidings of me, my Wife and 
Child had journeyed to the Porte, 
where they were most kindly received 
at the French Embassy. They had 
given up almost every prospect of 
meeting me again, when I made my 
sudden appearance in the strange 
Guise of a Turkish Bashaw. 

Under ordinary Circumstances, it 
might have gone hard with me ; for 
the Turks reckon it as an unpardon- 
able crime for a Christian to assume 
the Mussulman Garb, and conform 
outwardly to that religion, without 
having gone through the Proper Rites. 
However, as I have said, the French 
Ambassador was just then in high 
favor with the Porte. He made in- 
terest with the Captain Bashaw, the 
Kisla Aga, and the Grand Vizier him- 
self. The Services I had rendered to 
the Great Turk by suppressing the In- 
surrection at Broussa were taken into 
consideration ; and it was at length 
agreed, that if I would convey myself 


away privately, and take my Wife 
with me, no more should be said about 
the matter. It was given out at 
Broussa that I had been appointed to 
another and more distant Govern- 
ment ; and lie who had been Vizier to 
the unlucky Fat Man got his much- 
coveted Preferment, and, I have no 
doubt, was very happy in it, till the 
inevitable Tartar came, and he was 
Bowstrung, like his predecessor. So 
Gholab Bashaw resigned the Three 
Horse-tails that during so brief a period 
had waved at his Flagstaff, and be- 
came once more plain John Dan- 
gerous. The Sublime Porte, how- 
ever, confiscated all my Property al 
Broussa, including my Wives — I 
mean, my Women Servants. 

With my Wife and Child I now re- 
turned to Europe, full of Years, and, 
I hope, notwithstanding some Ups 
and Downs, full of Ilouors too. We 
were in no hurry, however, to return 
to England ; for I had wandered about 
Foreign Parts so long in Discredit, 
and Danger, and Distress, that I 
thought myself well entitled to see the 
world a little in Freedom and Inde- 
pendence, and with a Handsome com- 
petence at my Back. Therefore, as 
the Chevalier Captain John Dan- 
gerous, — I have dropped my Knightly 
rank of late years, — and furnished 
with all necessary passports and safe- 
conducts, we made our way across 
the Black Sea to Odessa, a mean kind 
of place, but rising in the way of trade ; 
and after a most affable reception by 
Hie Russian Governor of that place, 
journeyed at our ease through the 
Tauric Chersonese, now wrested from 
the Tartar Khans of Simpheropol, and 
belonging to the Muscovites. Next, 
in a handsome wheeled carHage-and- 
four, we made for the great City of 
Moscow, — the old Capital of the Great 
Dukes of Russia, — where we abode, 
two whole years, and went among the 
very best people in the place ; although 
I had an ugly Equivoque with a young 
Gentleman of Quality that was an of- 
ficer of Dragoons, and who, I declare, 
stole a diamond mounted Snuff-box of 


230 


The Strange Adventures 

mine off my wife’s Harpsichord, put- 
ting the same (the Snuff-box, I mean) 
into the pocket of his pantaloons. 
Him I was compelled to expel from 
my house, the Toe of my Boot aiding ; 
and meeting him subsequently at a 
Coffee-House, and he not seeming suf- 
ficiently impressed with the turpitude 
of his Offence, but the rather inclined 
to regard it as a venial Prank or 
Whimsey, I did Batoon him within an 
inch of liis life, and until there were 
more wheals on his Body than bars of 
silver-braid on his Jacket. This led 
to a serious misunderstanding between 
Justice and myself. I was not Im- 
prisoned, but was summoned no less 
than fifty-seven times before a kind of 
Judge they call an Assessor, who ad- 
dressed a numbor of interrogatories to 
me, which, at a moderate computation, 
reached, in the course of five weeks, 
three thousand seven hundred and nine 
questions. This might have gone on 
till Doomsday, but for the kind offices 
of a Muscovite friend, who hinted to 
me that if I discreetly slipped a Bank- 
bill for five hundred roubles into the 
hand of the Examining Judge, I should 
hear no more of the affair. This I 
did, and was soon after honourably 
acquitted ; after which I gave the 
young Spark whom I had batooned his 
revenge, by allowing him to doff me 
out of a few score pieces at the game 
of Lansquenet. By and by, being 
tired of Moscow, we removed to the 
stately northern Capital, Petersburg, 
where I had a handsome mansion on 
the Fiutanka Canal, and was on more 
than one occasion admitted to an 
audience with the Empress of Russia, 
the mighty Czarina Catherine ; a fine, 
bold, strapping woman, with a great 
taste for Politics, Diamonds, the Fine 


of Captain Dangerous. 

Arts, and affairs of Gallautry. The 
first time I made my obeisance to her 
Majesty (which was at her summer 
residence of Peterhoff, on the River 
Neva), she deigned, smiling affably, 
to say to me : 

u Ah, ah ! vous ctes le Sabreur an- 
glais qui avez rosse mes gens la-bas , a 
Moscou. Je voudrais que vous cn Jissiez 
autant pour mes faquins de Chevalier- 
Gardes a Petersbourg.” 

I was given to understand in very 
high quarters that I had only to ask, 
to receive a lucrative and honourable 
Appointment in the service of the 
Czarina, — either as a General by 
Land, or as an Admiral at Sea ; but I 
was sick of fighting, and of working 
too ; so at last, in disgust, I gave up 
my House, and taking shipping with 
my family at Cronstadt, retired to 
Hamburg, whence, after a brief so- 
journ, I travelled to France. 

My sainted Wife, with whom, after 
our reunion, I lived most happily, died 
in Paris, in the year 1773 ; and then, 
feeling my Days drawing to a close, 
and desiring to lay my Bones in my 
own Country, I returned to England, 
after an absence of more than Thirty 
Years. Finding that the old Mansion 
that had belonged to my Grandmother 
was for sale by Public Auction, I pur- 
chased the Freehold, repaired and 
beautified it, and came to reside in it, 
occupying my long and happy leisure 
by the composition of these Memoirs. 
And if any one of my Readers experi- 
ences one-hundredth part the pleasure 
in Reading these Pages (and that I 
dare scarcely hope) that 1 have ex- 
perienced in Writing them, John Dan- 
gerous will, indeed, be amply repaid 
THE END. 









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